GREAT OPPOSITIONS OF MARS

'Great Oppositions Of Mars' - Senmuth (4/10)

After traversing virtually every culture on Earth with his music, the next natural development for Russian experimental artist Valery Av would be to now travel to other worlds, and make music as a tribute and exploration of other planets. 'Great Oppositions Of Mars' is a journey through the mysterious red planet, relying almost exclusively on industrial music for influence, rather than the typical ethnic melange Senmuth usually dives into. while a change of pace is always welcome for this vast discography, the composition of the music ultimately fails, despite a fresh, futuristic sound palette.

With tracks like the booming 'Argyre' closely resounding 1950's science fiction 'alien invasion' cinema soundtracks, 'Great Oppositions' draws greatly from ideas of the future, and the bleak landscape of Mars. While you probably couldn't tell through the instrumental music here that this is about one planet in particular, the futuristic, spacey vibe is here in full. Much of Senmuth's work in the past has had a heavy concentration on using electronic instruments over real ones, but the music here is entirely artificially produced, which actually works well for the cold feeling here.

Where the album and music starts to really fail is not so much the sounds themselves, but the way they are put together. While it's certainly understandable for someone to consider this an 'ambient' album and enjoy it as such, the compositions are very listless, meandering through seemingly random chord changes and only occasionally switching up the pace to do something a bit different. Other songs like the apparent 'epic' '3923 Seconds On Mars' are mostly comprised of a subtle droning, which doesn't feel to have much purpose beyond filling space.

Senmuth is a good composer and has had some very bright moments in his career, but once again, the lack of thoughtful composition is too much for strong arrangements to make up for.

My favourite album in the huge Senmuth's discography is currently "Planetary Dust". So from the cover art and the title I was hoping to find a similar mixture of space rock, progressive electronic and ambient (sounds a bit Tangerine Dream, isn't it?) of that album.

The opening track starts with a couple of minutes of this kind then falls into a good but usual Senmuth track.

"Frame 35A76" has a chaotic but promising start but after few seconds we are in the industrial metal of the first albums. Not a bad thing, even with the randomic changes of pitch that I quite dislike.

"Channels of Mars" has an unusual slow tempo that makes it interesting.

The following tracks since "Olympus Mons" have all the same characteristics: an electronic intro that goes immediately into the industrial metal stuff. An exception is "Look For A Planet, and partially "Sydonia" that seems to have received more composing effort.

"Flights Above Nereidum" reprises the spacey sounds of the opener. A goos track unfortunately very short.

The longest track, "3923 seconds on Mars" has exactly this duration. It's spacey enough but at the same time percussions and electroncis make it dark as usual. Not a masterpiece, but it's the most enjoyable thing that I have found on this album.

It's not all good, even if better than its predecessor. I would say 2.5 stars, but I'm not so indulgent to round it up to three.

One more thing: the downloadable verison contains one bonus track: "Orbit of the 4th Planet". A good one, but it doesn't add much to the rest.