NAGUAL - LES AILES DE LA PERCEPTION

One of the things that I absolutely love about Igor Wakhevitch is his tendency for eclecticism. On any one of his albums, you are guaranteed a listening experience that incorporates at least a few different elements - electronic music, choral singing and/or chanting, beautiful strings, tribal percussion, etc. - and these elements are found either playing solo or all together in a mash-up of confused and beautiful sound. Nagual (Les ailes de la perception) is no different an experience.

This album, like Let's Start, has a strong leaning towards Wakhevitch's more beautiful side with tracks like "Never Poem for the Other", "The Smile of the Wolf on the Bench", "Beginning of Peter's Journey", which feature bouncy and cheerful playing of acoustic piano or guitar. In my opinion, the hopefulness of these tracks overpower the darker, brooding tracks such as the title track, the two "In the Nagual's Time" tracks, and "Spenta Aramati", which all have a typical electro-acoustic sound but with Wakhevitch's unmistakable touch. Unfortunately, these electro-acoustic tracks just don't have as great a punch as similar works on Wakhevitch's previous albums.

The tracks that stand out to me the most, besides the beautiful acoustic instrumental tracks that I've mentioned, would be "Hunapuguch" which is mainly steady mid-paced tribal percussion with a flowing drone in the background and feels quite brooding and mischievous and really gets the ritual feeling across that Wakhevitch has always been so great at, and "Cinderella" is a wonderful short interlude that take the acoustic instrument approach as before (this time with a music-box type of instrument) and adds a subtle electronic popping/crackling that all comes together to make a pleasantly creepy track. The album ends on it's best track, the symphonic and cinematic 8-minute long "Chirakan-Ixmucane", which is nearly entirely electronic save for a few moody string parts, but the synths are very much the focus of this adventure. As much as this track is great and a standout for this album and in Wakhevitch's discography, it's a bit too cosmic sounding considering the tribal and acoustic tone set by all of this album's previous tracks. Regardless, very well done and quite an enjoyable track.

A Nagual is the Mesoamerican folk name for what is now commonly called a shapeshifter, and the French portion of this album's title translates to "The Wings of Perception" (Naguals, as folk tells it, commonly took form as turkeys for whatever reason). I have no idea what this has to do with the music on this album, but I suppose if you sincerely want to try to string together imagery in your head of supernatural Mesoamerican turkeys, ultimately ascending into space, then this is the fuel for such imagination. Nagual (les ailes de la perception), in my opinion, plays out like a very "Peter and the Wolf" type of long-form composition that would possibly benefit from an accompanying written story-line or possibly even narration.

While I may have not appreciated the preceding album Fous D'Or, the least we can say is that Igor's musical aesthetics are definitely not straying from its original path drawn out in the arly part of the decades. In some ways, Nagual is just as unnerving and almost irritating as its predecessor, but at last it doesn't put forward any of that spoken esoteric bull[&*!#] right in your face. Oh yeah sure, there is a Mayan or Meso-American mythology concept (the nighttimes tropical forest artwork of Olivier Legris points to it), but it avoids the ridiculous Christian-related liturgical narratives, incantations and pagan-idol adoration bits encountered in his previous works. The music was created for an experimental theatre group taking residence at the Paris Opera, under the direction of Carolyn Carlson, already responsible for Les Fous D'Or

Clearly rid of the intrusive vocal interference of the last two albums, Nagual's almost-all instrumental and mainly-electronic music gets all the space it needs to develops its wings and shows its charms, despite letting some room for acoustic instruments interventions (both string instruments and piano). The unconventional vocals are mainly concentrated in a short section of the early musical progression. If there is a haunting shamanic drums sequence that can give you a tribal ambiance, it's followed a bit later by some kind of semi- celtic jig, it sms to lack a clear musical direction, especially when confronting the titles and their sonic contents.

The minimalist piano and electronic drone of Never Poem has a Terry Riley influence that gives an avant-garde flavour that otherwise lacked in many parts throughout the course of the album. However, I'm not exactly sure how this all relates to the semi-Chinese and semi- medieval acoustic string device used in Smile Of The Wolf piece to the supposedly Mayan mythology, but the Tangerine Dream-like synth layers of the closing Chirakan piece is not really Meso-American-sounding either.

A vast improvement of its predecessor, Nagual is still a very intriguing concept (well matter of speech, really), precisely because it doesn't have any logical explanation to the conceptual soundscapes, but then again, not everything needs explaining. One of his better later albums, this is also one of his less-logical one as well, despite not straying from his general musical quest.

"Perception to the blind!"

This Igor Wakhevitch's Nagual - Les Ailes De La Perception is a musical understanding of his readings of Carlos Castaneda's recountings of his "magical" encounters with mexican sorcerer "Don Juan". (To younger generations which are are not familiar with these teachings or books, imagine "Star Wars", "Matrix" and "H. Potter", compressed, reloaded and FOR REAL!).

Anyway, I have not been fond of much of this musician's works, his opera-like electronics are not in my likings and this work is not that easy to acquire. So after deciding to acquire it, I got to listen to it, with my expectations not that high. I found out a very astonishing Prog/Electronic album.

Not opera-like at all, it is almost an all "instrumental" album, with scarce human voices here and there. It could be in fact, the music for a "theater play" of these books, its "soundtrack". Of course its not a geographical exact version, but not such a thing exists either way.

The concept itself, is far too extensive, as to single point each of its branches, so in able to compress the experience, Igor Wakhevitch writes a wide variety of songs that hold on to the concept but not to a single acoustic/electronic style. He composes and plays from dark experimental electro/acoustic songs to white/pink & blue noise like ambients to native like ritual music to classical like piano or harp pieces to pure and bright analog-electronic synth music to folk-like (or his idea of mexican folk music) songs. All blended but not mixed-up. Each song is rich as unique as to stand alone or within the concept of the project.

Therefore it offers an almost "flawless" experience and the best of all are its highly inspiring and achieved compositions and performances, without ever sounding pretentious at all.

****4 + "something" PA stars.

A strange entity in the canon of Wakhevitch's work. This one is far more eclectic and difficult to pin down. There's a strange mixture of electronics and piano utilised for the duration of this LP but they're always kept separate.

Wakhevitch still manages to maintain that odd, off kilter weirdness that only the French seemed to pull off with aplomb in the 70's. Surprisingly Michael Gira of 'Swans' was once a big fan of big Igor which isn't really that surprising when you hear all the looped treatments that are very evident throughout.

'Spenta Aramati' sounds very much like the end of 2001 - Space Odyssey - where that guy with the wrinkly face is in the white room with the breaking wine glass. In God's zoo.

If any comparison could be made to 'Nagual', it would be with Faust. This however, is more clinical, less chaotic and far more refined. There are some beautiful moments such as 'Beginning Of Peter's Journey' which has a lovely piano tune that is echoed heavily, and reminds me of UK Kids TV programme 'Ivor the Engine' from the mid 70's.

It's also nice to know that Wakhevitch let 'Gabriel the Toad' from 'Bagpuss' play his banjo on 'The Smile Of Wolf On The Bench'. Sorry to you European readers with regards to these 70's UK programme references, but that's the imagery it conjures up in my head when I listen to this oddity. Childhood BBC memories.

There's some Ron Geesin-like piano exploits in 'Never Poem For The Other', before the unsettling 'In The Nagual's Time' starts, which has a creepy metronomic set of footsteps creeping upstairs as airy 1940' piano reverberations fill your headphones.

On 'Cinderella' a barking dog and the sound of pouring rain gives way to a pretty music box tune and trotting horse. Yeah, it's weird stuff folks.

Seemlessly, some good electronic keyboards are introduced after a good 15 mins with 'Chirakan-Ixmucane' which has similarities with the more atmospheric parts of Jarre's 'Oxygene'. This is a difficult album not only to rate but to review. It's fairly minimal, excellently recorded with very clear sound separation throughout. A good solid straight 3 stars for this one, even though I can't find any faults with it.

After satiating his wild streak by delivering some of the craziest and strangest electronic meets classical albums ever recorded with his first three releases and then a one in a million collaborative effort with the whacky surrealist Salvador Dalí, IGOR WAKHÉVITCH began to mellow out a bit as he increasingly journeyed off to India to study the mystical practices of yoga and Vedic texts and teachings. WAKHÉVITCH was also increasingly writing scores that would accompany the visual choreography of Carolyn Carlson along with the National Opera of Paris Group of Theatrical Researches. He continued writing massive works for plays, ballets and operas that would accompany. Only a small bit of these scores were ever recorded and released however WAKHÉVITCH started releasing samples on "Les Fous D'Or" and followed suit on his fifth album NAGUAL (LES AILES DE LA PERCEPTION), in English translated as "Nagual (The Wings Of Perseption).

Once again NAGUAL featured small snippets of much longer pieces extracted from two hours of music and was performed under the title "Human Called Being" which would be presented to the Empress of Iran, Farah Palhavi at the International Festival of Shiraz-Persepolis. The term NAGUAL means "master of the consciousness" in the Toltec language and once again WAKHÉVITCH delivered deep philosophical meanings through sound that according to him delivered the occult side of nature and conscious energy from the form of dreams that found physical form in our 3D construct. Heavy, man! Can't say i get that listening to this but whatever! The NAGUAL basically tells a similar tale to "The Lord Of The Rings" mythology and the entire concept was inspired by the writings of Carlos Castaneda. This album was a lot different from WAKHÉVITCH's previous works as it's more cosmic and closer to to the word of Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze at times than what came before but still varied enough and wild enough to fit into his idiosyncratic avant-garde musical style.

This album of 13 tracks features primarily shorter tracks that sample longer passages of a larger score with the exception of the closing 8-minute plus "Chirakan-Ixmucane." The majority of the sounds come from keyboards, synthesizers and computers but several other instruments are heard or at least simulated. Sounding something like a dark new age album, the sounds are eerie, ominous and enigmatic with Berlin School techniques such as cycling patterns and trippy cosmic tones and timbres. The album is very meditative actually and most surely reflects WAKHÉVITCH's mindset after chilling out in India many times (he would eventually quit music and move there permanently). While almost exclusively an electronic album this time around, NAGUAL features a diverse roster of strange squeaking sounds, swirlies, reverb, echo effects and processed fragments of speech. Even percussive sounds are processed and the sound of harps and other instruments are included.

The album is fairly diverse with spastic piano movements, reverb soaked motifs, crazy dynamics shifts and even an Irish jig. The tracks are either monotonously consistent or can throw extreme curveballs by changing gears completely. The creativity is quite clever on this one and it really makes me want to hear the entire two hours accompanied by the visual treat that surely must have matched the intensity. Tracks like the crazy reverberating "Sppenta Armati (Ritual Of The Zelator)" remind me of some of the techniques psycho-electronic act COIL would adopt in the 1980s and 90s whereas "Hunahpuguch" almost sounds like an aboriginal didgeridoo and drum circle session. "Beginning Of Peter's Journey" totally shifts gears and evokes a Chopin étude of some sort whereas "The Smile Of The Wolf On The Beach" just sounds like a silly happy love ballad that comes from left field. "Never Poem For The Other" continues the piano playing only with a cyclical bass line. "Cinderella" evokes a music box while the closer "Chirakan-Ixmucane" sounds more like traditional 1970s progressive electronic.

This album is a wild ride for sure and all the better for it. Whereas the previous "Les Fous D'Or" could be a bit monotonous at times, no such problem on NAGUAL as this is a roller coaster ride of sounds but a fairly chilled one more like the coaster in a kiddie park. It's new age music but fused with the darker recesses of classical music and the modernities of synthesized tones, timbres and textures of sound. The music is nothing less than hypnotizing as the mix of melody, droning, cosmic swirling and strange avant-garde weirdness coalesce into what supposedly represents specific concepts and ideas. While the connections to the overall theme may prove elusive nevertheless the musical procession is well designed as each vignette and cadence cleverly connects and contrasts in the most pleasing of ways. A nice later offering from one of the true geniuses of 1970s electronic music. For anyone seeking a progressive electronic album that packs a real punch filled with surprises then you can't go wrong with this one.