SEQUENTIA LEGENDA

Line-up / Musicians: - Laurent Schieber / Arturia Moog Modular, Arturia Minimoog, Arturia Jupiter-8, Arturia Solina, ARP Odyssey by ElektroStudio, Steinberg Hypersonic, M-Tron Mellotron, Gravity-Vocalise by Heavyocity, Atomic Sequencing tool, KORG PS-3300 Emulation from Full Bucket Music

1. "Around the Great Central Sun" (19:56) opening with a slightly more-modern glockenspiel sound in the simple starter sequencer weave, this object is driving forward with a purpose, showing no hint of stoppage must less slowing, and yet, as it travels mercilessly onward, the vehicle is somehow able to pick up reinforcements--passengers, if you will--adding to the weave, thickening the strength and resolve of the sentient being. But then, at the 10-minute mark, without warning or cause, there is a sudden weakening and hault to the inner core drive mechanism as the object seems to stop, as if to observe and assess, still giving off radiant energy as it waits, as it basks. Whether or not there is an exchange, or a recharge going on during this static pause is a quandary as one can no longer determine if the flow of energy has been one of expenditure or magnetic attraction: perhaps the Great Central Sun--the destination of the Object In Motion--has been attracting, magnetizing, even commanding the arrival (and audience or worship) of the OIM all along! As the eons of attendance turn into minutes, there seems to be a dwindling of lines of communication between the GCS and the OIM--perhaps one is dissipating, evaporating into the emptiness of space, or perhaps the consciousness of the OIM is fading, slowly switching off, to slip into an eternal state of dreamless sleep. Cool journey! I love the imagery it allowed me to delve into. (35.75/40)

2. "The Ring of Golden Light" (27:40) opening with layers of slightly-unsettling spacey synth notes woven together--and no sequencer--the song slowly develops as a "distant" tapestry of sequenced lines very slowly begins to emerge from beneath the ethereal space weave, taking about two minutes to finally achieve full integration and then dominance. The new dominant weave is flush with moving parts, all of them morphing subtly despite sounding and feeling as if they are remaining constant. This is brilliant! I love how subtle the changes are: it keeps one fully engaged within the effort of trying to catch each and every ray, glimmer, and flare. At 9:14 there is a major key change--a single point at which time everything in this perspective made a uniform shift in direction (and speed?). The course has been changed! But why? What has happened Then, at 11:15, there is another sudden shift: this time back to the exact course (and speed) we were on from 3:00 to 9:13. And then the background space-synth weave seems to make a play for leadership position--and forces the beam to make another shift to the faster course. The synth-weave backs down briefly but then, in the 14th minute, can be heard making another play for dominant, forcing yet another, completely new and different directional (and speed) change in the 15th minute. It's almost like this energy field has politics: as if it has a two-party factional drive (or driver). At 18:15 there is yet another directional shift, this one feeling a bit more destabilizing--even chaotic, as the energy beam falters for a few moments while it tries to regather its strength and momentum--to no avail as the entire operation is forced to shut down at the 20:12 mark, leaving an unsettling and seemingly directionless field of chaotic independent and disorganized synth waves to fill the void. Cosmic Voices and other forces of Discord and support begin to rush in as if to bolster up and help reform the spent entity. It seems, however, that the forces of Entropy and Chaos might prevail until the chorus of Cosmic Organizers regroup and rejoin the struggle for recovery (or, perhaps, rebirth). In the end, it feels as if all is lost, let go of, as the forces of Creation seem to fade into the background and disappear, the leftover molecules of energy allowed to scatter freely as they give in to Kali's forces of entropy. Perhaps this piece can be viewed as a metaphor for the contentious state our current version of humankind finds itself in?--or for the decay and fall of any empire (such as the US)? Thank you, Laurent, once again, for the gift of yet another piece of time-and-space-removing music that has allowed me such a wonderful journey within my very real imagination. (49.5/55)

3. "Bon Voyage" (20:45) seems like an homage to our late, great Berlin School artists as everything here, from the very opening, sounds like it's old, expressing the insidious urgency that those old TD and KS sequenced songs used to. I like the way Laurent has learned to hide secondary melodies and other nuanced sounds/elements within the music--its as if the screamed salutations of passersby can be heard as the bullet train/speed-of-light space craft slashes by without the listener on board the craft being able to make out any words or meanings, just shadow-like Edvard Munch "Scream" sounds. The final quarter of the piece projects a heightened urgency--as if tensions rise due to the unexpected findings at the end of the journey (or else due to fuel consumption worries). (35.5/40)

4. "Love Feeds Love" (3:34) a perfect little PE ditty that, for me, captures the spiritual essence of all that the subgenre tries to express in an amazingly compact three and a half minutes. Absolutely brilliant! Laurent, you are The Master! (10/10)

Total Time 71:55

A-/five stars; another minor masterpiece of Berlin School electronic music from this very faithful student (and now Master) of the style. If you're a dreamer who loves to let music take you on extraterrestrial adventures, you will love this music!

"AROUND THE GREAT CENTRAL SUN" takes the listener directly into a dark space filled with monolithic notes of hope; chiseled notes with a few overloops and entourloupes just to escape without possible return; 20 minutes that cannot be heard passing, a time limit. "THE RING OF GOLDEN LIGHT" takes us on an air of TANGERINE DREAM, titles of departure, lugubrious, introspective; it takes 4 minutes to warm up, 11 to find the musical space rail worthy of Schulze; at 20 minutes the station wagon brings you back to earth in a multi-dimensional decompression chamber, guaranteeing a new wandering with angelic choirs. "BON VOYAGE" refers to the spiral atmospheres of the master, it is different and there are a lot of analogies there; it turns, overloop, it feels like coming back in the past, the sounds seem to stop and it starts again, a natural hallucinogenic drug. "LOVE FEEDS LOVE" for the bonus on harmony and light, the essence of life; a radio edit who knows... to plunge your head into the vacuum of space with just a breath of oxygen to see where Love is.

SEQUENTIA LEGENDA tries to bathe us in a world without fear, without war, without stress (without reproach I don't know); a world where you are alone with your ideas for a certain contemplative outcome. A bit of his soul and his heart is hidden inside, it's up to you to find them before leaving in this hypnotic space. "Alcyone" largest star of the Pleiades, nodal point of reference, a sort of vortex synthesizing our energy or how music can further reduce the temporal sensation. Laurent would have fallen in love with SCHULZE with ''Mirage'' recent album in SCHULZE's discography; personally it's ''Moondawn'' for the 70s and ''Dreams'' for the 80s; 35 albums on my counter to find vibrations that Laurent was able to revive from near or far, on purpose or not; it's my 4th from him which allows me to cheerfully revise old sounds. A SEQUENTIA LEGENDA album can't be explained, can't be dissected, can't be chronicled, we talk about it, we dream, we reminisce, we stay quiet, absent in front of the moving world, we spin with our mouths closed through the stars without a particular vessel, just by spitting out a little oxygen to move forward, turn right, jump into the cosmic void.

"Experimental" or the path of perseverance and hope: a long melody, a long electronic crescendo to help you take off, to find in which musical sound space you are going, in which ethereal land you are going to engulf yourself; a long process to "take the time as when we had time! », a long river of emotion, of feeling that you incorporate yourself; the addition of Tommy BETZLER on percussion is really felt from 12'03 ''; from there you are plugged into the gravitational wave that goes towards Alpha Centauri or Moondawn, these pads that give intensity to New Age sounds; changes in sound intensity keep you awake enough not to drift off into cosmic space; a title that can serve as a musical cover during relaxation sessions in view of the smooth evolution and the celestial 'voices' coming out of the sequencers; ideal for a musical daydream.

"Float Among The Stars" or musical and mental elevation for the shortest title. Perhaps the most accessible to quickly immerse yourself in the sonic musical maelstrom; the modular Moog helped by the Solina leaves more in introspection than in the journey, initiated at the beginning by a twilight rise, amplified in its second part by a sound codified on angelic and Gregorian voices allowing you to stay high, very close to the stars and far from the gloom of the surrounding world.

"Beyond From the Beyond" retouched, remixed, reworked, recalibrated, a brief title that moves from its first notes; softness, gravity, silence, atmospheric emptiness, wisdom and beauty of the world seen from above, near the beyond. A title full of finesse, all in repetition. The repetitive sequence seems to flow naturally, bringing the ideal atmosphere for the dreamlike journey. It is in these moments that time seems to stop, to contract, to hang on the notes; time when duration no longer exists, a true musical oxymoron, an incantation of staggering sweetness that can put you in a trance. Listen, listen, listen to this title again and again, even beyond that, you are the one who will find the words even better.

SEQUENTIA LEGENDA does not do lace; a typische sound as Peter BAUMANN would say, soaring, introspective, ethereal compositions, surely meditative; tones with a strong resemblance to certain titles of SCHULZE, of course, which allow a sound support during a reading, during a writing, during a reflection, during a relaxation of personal relaxation, here is what to what this album can best serve; it is not reductive if you understand that these titles are made personally for you, a sound singularity for each listener who can create his own musical path; it reminds me of a review of the VANGELIS album on "China" speaking of a journey of mandarins at the time of the mellotron: we have the musical base, but it is up to each of us to choose our way, our space musical dream.

For titles, "The Return" from a crystalline atmosphere of energetic material that transports you from nagging way to reverb sounds, it is both repetitive and crescendo, it is mostly purely enjoyable! In "Floating Time" the atmosphere is rather on the elements, on the waves, storm, water drops, it goes too, is mesmerizing at times, reminiscent of JM Jarre also and a battery that you force you into a trance if you do not have that; little background, in the days before, during the 70s, this music was used for fellows to "go" with music and drugs force! Now you only need a good channel or a soft helmet from far away on the filaments of a comet for example. So yes, a little one feels will say targeted as KLAUS SCHULZE; but what is good, a bit like when I listened to the "Sanctuary" of R.REED, it looks like Mr. OLDFIELD, but it is not !! Finally, "Mind Lake" still sounding title "Schulzian" with a darker atmosphere, it goes to the "Sorcerer" of TANGERINE DREAM early. Personally, this is my favorite track, perhaps a little short !!

I will say no more, this music is a pan full of progressive music, one of the four sides with metal and symphonic declination PROG (neo or crossover). I echo the words of a friend: "It is music that awakens his inner and transports you." It is not wrong at all, it is a singular moment is a dream now, you can listen far from the turpitude of the surrounding world, away from environmental stress, away from everything to also recharge a bit and rest his own ears! But the most important (as Jacques Mayol said in "The Big Blue"), it is a long personal journey to his own desires, the reason for my article where I do not dissect more specifically 3 titles!

Amira a 3 track (one composition in its short and long version + a different 20 minutes one) 2015 release and second album (as far as it seems here) is no exception to my already formed impression of just another Progressive Electronic musician recreating someone's else musical language.

The only reason I found for it to have no big enthusiasts may well be my own reason to rate it as a decent tribute, but repetitive to the bone, music composition wise.

Its own few highlights are overly stretched until they become a repetition of a repetition disguised with some electronic efx but not enough to actually enrich the once charming then boring, due to the same, few interesting melodic lines (which may end up sounding like only one long tedious one).

Digging in deep and with a lot of patience it shows here and there some interesting moments which makes me wonder why he has to be so blatantly self-overshadowed by the huge self-impossed cloud of those two gigantic Progressive Electronic figures self acquired and rightly owned musical languages, when he could turn the whole thing around?

So to be gentle, (and think of my money going down the drain as part of the job), another Sequentia Legenda tribute to past heroes with an added touch of his own super famous countryman Jean Michel Jarre's musical idiom. (Who by the way actually had the talent & vision to construct his OWN electronic musical language even among those gigantic, menacing shadows in their own time and kingdom up to the point of influencing their style eventually).

Anyway back to the numbers, 2.5 for this one.

1. "Out of the Silence" (21:55) starts surprisingly familiar and takes a little time growing and developing (a little too much time, in my humble opinion). A drummer's cymbol play enters and joins the sequence over the course of the fifth minute. It sounds live (not looped)! Full drums enter in the seventh minute, total key shift at 7:35 and then back to original formation at 8:25. Two more different key shifts in the tenth and eleventh minutes with a few more percussion noises added to the mix, but the song doesn't really go anywhere new, different, or exciting--not even the shift to a more minor key spectrum at the 11:00 mark--though it is nice that there are four key shifts to choose from instead of the usual two. At 14:00 all rhythm tracks are dropped and multiple layers of synth chords and synth noises hold their own in a new universe of spacey-ness. I like this section. Especially the hypnotic four-note electric piano arpeggio repeated as the central foundation. The brilliance of Rainer Br'ninghaus's work with Eberhard Weber comes to mind. A solid song with a wonderful final third--again, a song that is displaying the growth and development of Laurent's confidence and mastery. (8.5/10)

2. "Ici et Maintenant" (25:40) opening with a much darker, foreboding soundscape than is usual for Sequentia Legenda, the slow fade in of the rhythm and percussion tracks and multiple loops of synth washes brings with it a softening of the tension, a slight brightening of hope. By the fifth minute all levels seem set. By the ninth minute the repetition is starting to wear and then--boom!--at the 9:00 mark, just in perfect timing, there is a big shift--a key change which settles the nerves. Awesome! Laurent is getting so good at reading his listeners (or, at least, me). Something about this key makes the music so much more settling, more relaxing, then, at 11:00, the key shifts again--back to its original, but thanks to that two minute reprieve, it is much more tolerable, enjoyable. Another shift at 13:00--and with it some new synth and keyboard "harp" chords and flourishes. Nice! At 15:00 we enter yet another key. The sequenced items are feeling so friendly and close now. New percussives are being added-- prominent kick drum in the lower range and hi-hat cymbol in the high. After 17:00 a few more synth noises: insect buzzes, full synth wash chords, and an orchestra-like snare track. Nice. The soundscape is so perfectly balanced-- and not overly full. The subtle introduction of so many elements helps me, the listener, to stay entranced and entrenched . . . in the Here and Now. Tom-tom runs are added to the mix in the twentieth minute and then, quite suddenly, at the 20:00 mark, everything collapses; all tracks but the synth washes and a few two-note rhythm tracks disappear. This is awesome! I am so stupefied by the slowly panned and flanged single note "guitar pluck"--I'm reliving my deep connection to Propaganda's "Dream Within a Dream"--one of my all-time favorite songs. Love the prolonged exit with the percussives and upper octave electric piano arpeggi. Awesome song! Definitely a showcase piece of a Berlin School master! (10/10)

3. "Valentins Traum" (17:24) a long opening with minor or discordant chord choices over which odd and eerie, even disturbing, sounds flit in and out of the soundscape. The sequenced rhythm track stays far in the background, fading in and out of the aural spectrum. Only in the fifth minute does it begin to emerge and stay, even rise to a place within the thick of the sonic palette. By the end of the sixth minute an electronic harpsichord riff, insect zip!- buzz, electronic tambourine, and rotation of synth strings washes have established themselves as the mainstays. The chord selection is not quite as dark and scary now, though eerie, unnatural sounds continue to fly in and out of the soundscape. That "harp/harpsichord" riff is so hypnotizing! In the eleventh minute multiple components of a drum kit are introduced and interwoven. The eerie sounds become more frequent, constant, and layered in multiplicity as the drums and rhythm tracks fade out by the end of the fourteenth minute. The d'nouement is slow, gradual, and steady, so I'm guessing that Valentin's dream was a bit of a disturbing event, though not one that caused sudden fright or night terrors, but the persistence of the scary sounds continues in the fore despite the slow fade of the music into the background, so perhaps I a wrong. Nice work. Definitely engaging, mesmerizing, and convincing as a representation of its subject matter. (9/10)

Five stars; another masterpiece of Berlin School-inspired progressive electronic music from this evolving master-- and another superb masterpiece to contribute to the lexicon of Prog Electronic Epics and Prog Valhalla.

So the origin of the famous Berlin School of electronic music came the same influenced by past done electronic music experimentations which go way back to the Russian musician and inventor Leon Theremin who invented the theremin in 1920 which is the first electronic music instrument.

Therefore assuming that, for example, Phaedra is that school is totally wrong. TD´s musical quest led them to that personal composer´s language in that work and its astounding result as it happened differently with Schnitzler´s Ballet Statique (1978) whose same date of works, even as founder and also as an example, led him to a very different as unique musical language.

So Sequentia Legenda´s Blue Dream (2014), without taking into account their verbal or written marketing expressions or verbal artistic intentions, is an extension of Phaedra or Schulze´s Timewind not the Berlin School as such, which as mentioned started with actual electronic music experiments, but obviously market wise it will turn out to be quiet unpopular to sell in those terms.

Therefore if you feel the kind of hunger for music which resembles or recreates the 1974-1980s TD´s or Schulze´s same dates own self acquired musical idiom, Blue Dream will fit in those parameters almost to perfection. If you are looking for a self acquired modern extension of the Berlin School of electronic musical language look somewhere else because, believe it or not, it exists and it does not sound as Rubycon or Timewind, it has evoluted a lot since Electronic Meditation or K. Schulze.´s Irrlicht (1972) .

***

1. "Stratums of Seraphic Voices" (26:28) a variety of Moog Modular-sourced chords weave together for the first three minutes of this one. The plasticized percussive sounds MIDI-ed within the "drum" and rhythm sequence track (reminding me very much of the sounds produced from Blue Man Group music) that develop and establish themselves throughout the bulk of the song. (Love the tabla sound integrated in there, as well!) As a matter of fact, one might conclude that the percussives are the real lead track here with the synths playing second fiddle--though the song would be far from as effective without them and their steadfast swirling and spiraling. The addition of 80s sounding Western drum machine percussion sounds is well-integrated by this point. A key change at 17:38! What an unexpected surprise! And then back at 19:15. Back up again at 20:55. And another higher shift at 22:30. Bursts of Star Warsian space-spitting noises join in the soundscape during this last four minutes. A final downward key shift at 24:50 finds the music joined by Mellotron choir voices. Nice. (9/10)

2. "Around the Second Moon" (22:45) opens with some very interesting slowly sliding note "arpeggi" beneath which some sequential percussion/bass lines try to establish themselves. As the treble sounds thin and disappear, the "bubbling," "squirting" sequencer lines become more interesting, hypnotic, captivating, and then foundational, even melody holders. In the fourth minute, they are the only music placeholders before some synth washes sneak in from behind. The chord choices of the synths add so much to enhance the sequencing. It's not until the middle of the seventh minute that the first percussive sound arrives and begins to elbow its way into the mix. By now the bass and synth lines have wormed their way into your subconscious in a kind of Edgar Alan Poe way while syncopated, intermittent percussives make it sound like Madeline Usher trying to break out of her casket in the basement. This is SO COOOL!!! New upper octave sequence sneaks in during the twelfth minute before a wave of a cymbol crash signals the achievement of full sound. Simply brilliant! So cool that the free, or improvisational instrument is a kind of large, kodo-like drum--until the seventeenth minute when percussives fade out. By the beginning of the eighteenth minute, all of the original instrumental sounds and sequences have pretty much faded into the distant background save for the synth washes--which now seem augmented by Mellotron choir voices. Staticky-rainstick-fly noises pan quickly across the soundscape while all three of the dominant sequential tracks slowly reassert themselves, if still in the background. A little PETER GABRIEL Passion: Music for the Last Temptation of Christ soundtrack can be felt at the end. (10/10)

3. "Elevation" (20:36) very steady, even, and subtly uneventful over the first half, the second half sparks to life but then drags on without enough development, resolution, or dénouement. (8/10)

Were I more familiar with Klaus Schulze's work of the second half of the 1970s I might find more to compare and critique, but, as is, I can only find praise. The clarity and fullness of modern sound is so pleasant and fulfilling to the ear and soul than the often thin and scratchy stuff of recordings from the 70s that, as with the Master's 2007 release, Kontinuum, I am filled with only praise and joy.

Five stars; a minor masterpiece of progressive rock music and one of the 21st Century's shining examples of stellar Berlin School revitalization.