Melorman’s successful performance keeps the listener enthralled with soft music, relaxing, but imbued with a certain melancholy that will delight fans of sounds conducive to contemplation.
[Release page] Antonis Haniotakis is no stranger to the customary art of our humble lines. After having had a hand on many netlabels, he released the excellent Out In A Field in the fall of 2009 on the Japan-based Symbolic Interaction imprint. Asking him to close the When Light’s Drillin’ The Haze compilation (still available free here) was an obvious and rewarding choice for Chroniques électroniques. Melorman releases his second album as a physical release with US-based Sun Sea Sky Productions (May, 2011). Questioning the confidentiality surrounding the output is matched only by the humility and friendliness of the Greek-born musician.
What I like to call IDM has a foray of fractured rhythms, rough and industrial, that simply spills over to the dark side. The global crisis facing Greece has yet to alter the size of Melorman’s enchanting music. Because yes, I dare say, this segment of electronic music has a gift of showing syrupy sound structures. Melorman’s successful performance keeps the listener enthralled with soft music, relaxing, but imbued with a certain melancholy that will delight fans of sounds conducive to contemplation. Another positive and original asset of Melorman is that he can play the synth. Scarce, at a time when most use their bikes as gadgets. From the first notes of “Celia,” I found happiness with the sense of simple melodies and melancholy that he had been able to inject his reading of “The Robot Can’t Swim” (by Magnitophono) via When Light’s Drillin’ The Haze. There is even something innocent, almost naive in the melodies of Melorman (“Forget,” “Saturday Morning,” “Under a Shelter”). But this is not daunting, especially when the rhythm is further and more subtle, like “Two And Nine.” After Noon is definitely an album that projects a smile making you want to leave the torments of cities and their factory workers, to give strength and firmness of intact and skinned maiden stealth bathed in sunlight. Melorman was found in Crete, Greece; this gives the work a spleen almost happy feeling. We would like to join Melorman to discover where he draws his inspiration and his amused or terse passages of time.
In the shade of old and new flagship labels of the genre, some continue to work in independence and privacy that can be described as unfair. Like other Greek musicians before him, such as Spyweirdos, Subheim, Magnitophono or Mobthrow, Melorman transmits sensations that bring an essential nobility of feeling. Will please his fans, and most certainly, fans of Boltfish Recordings.
After Noon is out now on Sun Sea Sky. [Release page]
Original review by Ed Loxapac, syndicated from Chroniques électroniques and edited for igloomag.com.
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