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Once some invitations have been accepted they can never be undone. Such is the case with Cosmic Ground, the Kosmische Musik inspired project from Dirk Jan Müller. Again and again with a shadowing verve his albums pull us in to the primeval era of the Berlin-School - a realm that once entered is hard to leave. Proceeding in quiet defiance of common Ambient Music values his Aftermath (68:12) travels in great arcs through the surreal measures of Spacemusic history. Across 14 interconnected tracks it originates some ten lightyears from anywhere, to begin distilling an expression of the interstellar mind. In this album's luxuriant fullness of spirit and texture we wander well a lost territory of timbre and tone. Thus, Aftermath provides its own center of gravity - opening a chasm of negative space within which to whisper synthetic poetics into your ear. Only below this faint starlight do hidden harmonic hues emerge. While ruined choirs rise out of phantom forms, a shudder of synths anchors monolith slab sized drones. High among the sky-deep odd disjunctions are mood propelling circling, cycling sequencer routes - echoing out in uncoiling spirals and spins. Further in, an ethereal Mellotron begot atmosphere descends, warping, then twisting downward in mysterious washes of sound. With its fuming demons - as if holding their breath, waiting beneath the moaning of the wind - nebulous shadows gather and recede in a long, harsh sigh of time. From an elsewhere world of modulated oscillators and exerted voltages a foreboding aura of uncertainty is generated. Yet, much as a brood of synthesizer modules and some other obscure electronic mechanisms are indeed powering this score, it is a singular human imagination directing it. Aftermath conjures an extended zone resembling a turbulent dream we could not control. Transported utterly through its midnight nocturne the intrepid listener finds that by morning nothing remains of their spectral night flight but its shadows. Not a word or a name will come out of these stark, archaic modulations. The endeavor is truly about sonic symbols - about one person reaching out to another, at the most intimate of levels, so that both may glow and grow in unexpected ways.
Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END - 4 December 2025 |
