Anantakara (Phillipe Wauman) the man behind the music, is a specialist in creating lush and fantastical art works of sound [...]

ANANTAKARA is now back with Amor Mundi, an exciting and compelling album, complex yet compelling, grandiose and varied, inspired by [...]

"Transmuted By is indeed a masterwork of crafted genius by the artist Anantakara. For me personally its music I adore, [...]

In a year, I get a lot of requests to hear an album in order to write a review about [...]

Anantakara (Phillipe Wauman) the man behind the music, is a specialist in creating lush and fantastical art works of sound and tone, and I have been a follower of his ever since I came across Momentum Lapses in 2018, and have been hooked ever since.
Here on this brand new offering entitled NEWT (At Whose Feet is Eternity) exploring the realms of Nut the Egyptian goddess of the sky and the night, we have a glorious new release that is as far wide and reaching as you the listener will allow, but this splendid ambient soundscape is a truly amazing mood filled journey.
The careful and almost apprehensive opening offering is called She Holds A Thousand Souls, the atmospheric construct here is wonderfully artistic, it builds and creates a vast dimension of tone to wander through, whilst In Whose Hand is the Always, has a totally different energy and style, and is at times almost classical in its progression and manifestation, the repetitive but growing and expanding mantra on keyboards reminded me of the late but still great Darshan Ambient (Michael Allison) in style, the compositions progression is an art form all of its own, in what is an extremely addictive opus.
Lady of the Sycamore our third piece of creative genius is a much darker offering, there is a sense of movement within the weave of this offering I find particularly alluring, and the structure of the overall composition continuously and symbiotically uses its electronic mastery, to bring us one of those tracks that is difficult not to leave on repeat for hours.
The longest of the 5 musical offerings is She Who Bore the Gods at well over nine minutes long, and employs a crafted musical narrative that is inventive as it is artistically sublime. At around 3 minutes in, the energy of the composition picks up and drives us head long into an arrangement that is like a veritable beacon of sound, and then allows us to pull back and float in its utter ambience, this would be my personal favourite off the album and one that reminded me of another late but great musician in Harold Budd.
The last track off this simply superb album is called One Who Hears; the composition has a sense of finality about its construction, which of course makes it the perfect ending track off the release, the keyboards and the performance by the artist here is so moving and deeply creative, and one that I could with ease listen to many times over, and still it would creative an emotive backdrop to my day.
NEWT (At Whose Feet is Eternity) by Anantakara is and was one of the finest electronic ambient works of the year, a year we can’t wait to see the back of in 2020. Here is an album that has five creative and very classy arrangements contained within, and in my view his best work so far.
NEWT (At Whose Feet is Eternity) by Anantakara is an album of stylish electronic compositions, created by an artist who I rate up there with Al Gromer Khan and Darshan Ambient, it is creative colourful and descriptive, and the ambience it manifests is simply compelling.

ANANTAKARA is now back with Amor Mundi, an exciting and compelling album, complex yet compelling, grandiose and varied, inspired by SPINOZA and his vision of the world. Amor Mundi is an album that seeks to integrate all the beauties of the universe, all its aspects, all its richness. But it is also and even more importantly an album that wants to be intimate because each one of us is a full and complete part of this universe. Therefore, Amor Mundi is for everyone, as a musical bridge between us and this vast world to which we are connected, and in fact, welded together in many ways. It is a journey, step by step, ever deeper into the thought of SPINOZA and nature. With Amor Mundi, ANANTAKARA gives us an astonishing opus in truth, rich in a beautiful harmonic and sonic aestheticism, to listen and listen again to savor its multiple facets.

(Chronicle and interview carried out by Frédéric Gerchambeau)

“Transmuted By is indeed a masterwork of crafted genius by the artist Anantakara. For me personally its music I adore, it allows us as listener’s vast areas of the music room to explore and navigate. There can be no doubt that the minimalistic ambiance that this album bathes in, and also creates, would be a harmonious and atmospheric backdrop with which to manifest other works of art to, and an album that fans of long-form ambient music are going to literally lap up.” ( Steve Sheppard)

This long-form album resonates at a totally unique level for me, it has an ambiance that it seems to manifest all by itself and this quite artistic endeavor would work beautifully in a modern art gallery, like the Tate Modern in London for example, as one roams from one piece to another.
The opening portal to genius is called Incantations and is one of the finest examples of minimalistic ambient work you will find; at times its depth and vastness reminded me of the work of artist Scott Lawlor, and at other moments the volume of music that resides within the nothing that this composition creates, reminds of very early Eno, back to the days of Lizard Point.
I adore this style of musical interpretation, I could listen to it for days, and when we drift into the musical arms of the next piece called Incandescence, we arrive at a dimensional doorway of luminescence and fluorescence, an arrangement that utilizes keyboards in such a crafted artistic way, it’s hard to tell what’s going to happen next, it’s construction is held within a narrative of suspense, one that literally hums and glows musically around you. The natural quietness of this offering has a truly addictive quality about it that is utterly transfixing, and as the composition moves onwards it continues to grow a sense of energy that is undeniable, but incredibly spacious.

In a year, I get a lot of requests to hear an album in order to write a review about it. The list is long and in this one, there is an incredible number of unknown artists to my ears who offer albums of all kinds, as long as synths and sequencers are used on it. No need to write that my ears hear of all the tonal colors! And there are good surprises. Nice discoveries like this one; Anantakara. A Philippe Wauman’s project, a Belgian musician who defines himself as a contemplative sound calligrapher, Anantakara, a Sanskrit adjective meaning to make infinite, proposes in MOMENTUM LAPSES a little jewel for the pleasure of the sounds and ambiances which flirt with a New Age rather progressive, even experimental.

Arpeggios whose limpidity is dancing with their sibylline shadows accompany the smothered knocks in the very theatrical opening of Momentum. Immediately, gurgles flutter in this setting embellished by waves with abrasive rays which come and go in a tonal envelope always growing. A synth wave perfumed of Mark Isham’s trumpet tones explores these ambiences, giving it a seraphic charm that adds to the dramatic power of this charming opening title. And that’s not all! Keyboard riffs take on an orchestral garb and sculpt a ballet choreography with a gentle staccato movement whose intensity is driven by percussions that are very limited but oh so well placed. The piano also sets its delicate notes in a finale that swaps its passive rhythm for a brief movement of sound oasis, just before resuming the rhythm of classical dance that brought Momentum to its emotional bloom. The tone is set and the music of MOMENTUM LAPSES is launched. The orchestrations are less jerky in The High meets the Low which, having left chords juggling in suspension, animates the ambiances with clanic tom-toms. Sound jewels gravitate suspended on this rhythm very close to the spiritual trance and the synth waves smear the horizons with rays which flirt with the doors of oblivion. Breath of an Unstained Desire does in music decomposition with a rather daring approach where everything seems to be played backwards. The result is amazing. Even if one recognizes small bits of structures that come and go in this 7th album of Anantakara, including a beautiful finale more musical, we are rather in the perfumes of Universe Zero here. Intuition’s Breeze takes us on the paths of an unarmed war with a bass line whose resonances found echo in the tears of the Martenot waves. The rhythm without bumps progresses beneath a sonic sky well adorned by multiple synth streaks full of strident weeping and by electric piano notes which sparkle in a contracted melodious approach. The percussions, which have been grafted in all subtlety around the 3 minutes, give a second rhythmic breath to this title that caught my attention from the first listening. Slow and very sinister in its development, The Great Chi in the Sky has nothing to do with this Rick Wright classic in Dark Side of the Moon! Its rhythm is slow, like a giant clock whose pendulum intimidates and orders submission. The chords and arrangements which sculpt it are king of its sneaky musicality, since they magnetize our attention while deploying a musical force that forms a din that still remains at the doors of a fascinating musicality. These sounds, these notes as well as these orchestrations on continuous evolutions in order to create musical layers on a bed of slow, almost hypnotic rhythms, are the strength of this album of which one never knows on which foot to dance … or on which neuron to meditate. Ditto for Doorways to Unnamed Power which, on the other hand, is more complex and more evasive in its melodious approach. The light rhythm, Spiral Bridge to Timelessness unfolds like a series of melodies chained in a music box. Percussions and percussive effects are just divine here. Those with blown glass tones tickle the ears, and start this chain of melodies, while others closer to the real offer a clever mix of Tibetan tribal and oriental tribal in a soundscape adorned with graffiti and fantasy which can possible only by the means of EM and its vast array of equipment. The final sprinkles our ears with a Steve Roach fragrance. An affirmation that is necessary considering the opening of The Meaning in Every Curves and Lines. The peculiarity of this title are these lassos of sounds that come and go like immense sound fronds whereas gradually a slow rhythm imposes its stability in a kind of esoteric Groove with another display of percussive effects high in colors.
The color and the calligraphy of the sounds is the goal aimed by Anantakara and force is to admit that MOMENTUM LAPSES reaches Philippe Wauman’s real intentions. All in all, it’s an amazing album that is musical enough for the genres imposed through a delightful palette of tones and a sound aesthetic that does justice to the ambitions of the Belgian multi-instrumentalist. Meditative music with a zest of creation that brings us into a world where few artists dare to venture!