CLOUDS

Spanish performer Tomás Fernández Girón returns in 2017 with his third full-length work, `Clouds'. The talented artist released a fragile and sadness-flecked Berlin school-modelled electronic gem back in 2014 with his debut album `Forest', incorporated warmer and more carefully melodic pieces on the follow-up `Stones' a year later, and `Clouds' now sees the artist adding even more variety. Be it heavier dramatic moments or even unexpected dance elements this time around, Girón's impeccable skill and great musical taste permeates every second of `Clouds', and it's another beautifully floating atmospheric electronic work that grafts classic prog-electronic vintage equipment sounds with a modern sensibility.

Opener `Stratus' is an unhurried dreamscape of serene ambient approaches, gurgling rise-and-falls, jangling sequencer beats and those beautiful weeping electronic tendrils that have become one of Girón's signature sounds. Spectral Mellotron choirs groan majestically, pulsing beats raise mysterious tension, and everything ultimately (and surprisingly!) melts into a chasm of groaning heavy unease. The meditative stillness drifting through `To the Inner Temple' is lifted by bouncing beats, spacey wavering slivers and deep bleeding electronic melts, and `Blow' holds both reflective and loved-up trilling themes (some of which might be among the most romantic to date from the artist), plus jangling crystalline chimes that are rippled with a psychedelic playfulness.

The gently melancholic `Between the Clouds' unveils lightly mournful tones full of longing and resignation over spacey droning washes that teem with the hope of new life and rebirth. `Cumulonimbus' takes a welcome up-tempo turn to give the album a quickened boost with skittering sequencer patterns and clipping trance-like dance beats around lush Jean-Michel Jarre-like pillowed touches, and the low-key and subdued closer `Through the Air' unfurls with seeping reverberations over sustaining ambient wisps and lethargic klaxon-like ebbs.

Traces of the vintage masters still remain, but Girón has forged plenty of his own identity over his three studio works to date. All the pieces on `Clouds' flow beautifully and have specific destinations so never drift aimlessly, and all the individual little ideas and sounds that pervade all of Girón's albums now seamlessly blend together into a weighty whole. Far from insubstantial airy New Age music that the placid title might suggest, `Clouds' is another sublime Berlin-School/Kosmische Musik/ambient masterwork from one of its most exciting young composers, and once again Girón's latest release can emerge as one of the standout prog-electronic works of 2017.

Four stars.