music album reviews

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 colorful, and descriptive, and the ambiance it manifests is simply compelling.

Steve Sheppard

Very interesting concept for an album here, I really liked the quality of the production and the good progression! Very good use of panning and volume automation to bring up the dynamics of the song; slowly bringing the track alive with very subtle elements, really great work, we loved the concept, overall a brilliant electronic piece here.

Sinusoidal Music (India) about She Who Bore the Gods (track from the album)

“Serenity Despite The Storm is the most realistic album I’ve heard about emotions versus global containment”

SERENITY DESPITE THE STORM is the most realistic album I’ve heard about emotions versus global containment. I believe that its acoustic side has something to do with it, thus creating a sensation of promiscuity as tangible as that which ties us in from the first breaths of Manyfold Quiet Trances. No matter how much I dig, but I can’t find a dead moment there. A great album that I highly recommend, even if we are quite far from the Berlin School. Except that fans of Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma era will be delighted by this Anantakara.

Sylvain Lupari

It’s a tough album with sharp twists in the 12 tracks that have this very intimate thread connecting them to each other. There are moments of pure madness, as there are moments of pure genius. These moments are more numerous, leading us little by little to the discovery of an album where even his music always transcends its logical borders a little more.

[…] AMOR MUNDI (Life As An Infinite Flow) is not for all ears. But creativity quickly resurfaces in the middle of this record that we learn to love with each new listening. There are awesome moments here and moments of tenderness unique to Anantakara. To discover and listen to it alone.

Sylvain Lupari

n 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!

Sylvain Lupari