DEATHKNOWLEDGE & LIFEPERCEPTION

'Deathknowledge & Lifeperception' - Senmuth (6/10)

On top of his metal-leaning madness, Senmuth mastermind Valery Av has lately gone in a direction that favours his lighter side over the heaviness. Be it soothing ambient music, or daunting explorations into ancient culture, Senmuth always seems to be reinventing himself. 'Deathknowledge & Lifeperception' shows Senmuth picking up the reins of orchestral composition once again. While the quality starts to lag and decay towards the latter half of the album and the execution still suffers from the lack of any actual orchestra involved, this is a well-produced piece of work for Senmuth, and generally quite a step up in terms of composition.

First experimenting with symphonic/orchestral music a few years before with 'Summarium Symphony,' Senmuth shows a real step up from that album here. Although the majority of the sound here is created and arranged through the use of a computer and no orchestra was actually used here, things sound surprisingly authentic, although it's still clear that what the listener is hearing isn't real musicianship. For the sake of composition however, the majority of the music here seems to be thoughtfully composed, with enough complexity, depth of sound and subtlety to be worth quite a few listens.

Unlike 'Summarium Symphony' which suffered from a lack of variety in the tone, Senmuth has quite a wide range of both sound and mood here. 'Revival Of The Reason' opens the album with a melancholic sound, with bursts of optimism emerging sparsely throughout the strings-driven track. The other highlight 'Inaccessible Motive' is quite a bit darker in nature. Driven by a melody on the sitar, the song underlines the variety heard here, over orchestral works done in the past.

The only thing keeping me from calling this a 'great' album is the fact that the music begins to take a dive towards the latter half of the album. Things are still kept pleasant and functional in natrue, but the inspiration and grasp of melody seems to escape after the first few tracks, robbing 'Deathknowledge & LIfeperception' of being called a consistent and excellent piece of work. For what it's worth though, the album is quite a good listen, and this is an above-average work for the Russian one man act.

Ther fact that this album starts with one of the more trivial and insignificant tracks ever released by Senmuth shouldn't mislead the listener. Skip the first track and you'll find some good music here and there.

This album belongs to the spacey side of Senmuth, so it's tendentially ambient and symphonic and gives less room to the ethnics.

Let's start from "Sargam". The ambient is still symphonic and spacey, but unlike the first track contains the usual darkness. The percussions are the only ethnic element that contribute to make the music more powerful. A dark symphony .

"Pillars Of Creation" is symphonic as well. It's opened by windy keyboards and brass accents. I imagine how this could sound if played by a true orchestra. The symphony is broken by psychedelic intervals that come and go too suddenly breaking the continuity and also the listener's attention.

"Universe Principles" is even more symphonic. Strings Keyboards start very symphonic, but the good suddenly goes to be replaced by a meaningless sequence of percussions and chords driven by a mandolin like sound. Another lost opportunity for a great track.

"Inaccessible Motive" proceeds on the dark-powerful-symphonic line but is more consistent also in terms of composition and continuity. a 4.5 stars track on a 2.5 stars album. It's the longest track, too and the pricipal reason why this album deserves a listen.

"Avatarati" has the ethnic percussions and also the melody can remind to the Middle-East, but the strange bells and the brasses are the new elements. The first add a touch of weirdness, the second give the idea of the orchestra. Not bad, this one.

"Approach Distance I" is unusual. Composed like a string quartet with just a subtle percussion behind and the drone of a violin playing the melody is very close to Vangelis, only a lot darker.

"Approach Distance II" is like the industrial metal version of the previous track. Strong percussions and the normal Senmuth's sounds. The theme is highly dramatic and would fit well into a Sci-fi movie's sountrack if the sudden ethnic stops are cut out.

So the good and the bad are quite balanced in this album. 2.5 stars rounded to 3 because of that couple of good tracks. Not the right album to start exploring Senmuth.