The music of Chronotope Project explores this time-space confluence and invites the listener on ambient journeys of deep texture infused with gentle pulsing rhythms and soulful melodies.
Always perfect symmetry, always slowly flowing
The sparkling opening is like light reflected off the dappled surface of the water in the afternoon, calming but strangely kinetic in appearance. “Unwinding the Dream” (6:12) (a remix from the 2013 album Event Horizon which is with the Relaxed Machinery label) balances a weaving pattern with a Haken Continuum crying beast somewhere in the distance. The glasslike layers that frame the atmosphere of the sound flow into larger forms. The geometric sound forms are perfect, the atmosphere warm and relaxing, the beast is sad somewhere out there. The music makes an entrance for beauty and there she is. The feeling of track 2 is both healing and intriguing, always perfect symmetry, always slowly flowing. “Mind’s I” (6:28) creates a sound that is intentionally reflective, the pace and tempo is steady, slow, and infinite.
With these modern synthesizers I might hear classical trapezoid drums and cymbals, the 4th track is “Ghost in the Machine” (4:37), a water scene for strengthening mind and matter, employing keyboards and the driving forward motion is from the bass. The beat is crisp, the energizing light reflects off the water, the crying beast now hums out there, the crying beast calls to the moon or the sky and the bass is like a heartbeat forever. Awaken to a sad lonely landscape with slowly emerging hope, cool winds through glacial cello structures of mercy. The air is below freezing on track 6, “Arctic Spring” (3:38) where the dialog is graceful and balancing, guitar and cello greet the warming sunshine, joined by the koto, with some winsome flute accents, haunting woodwinds and northern lights.
Track 8 evokes the music of the weather, “Dharma Rain” (6:04) (remix of the title track, from the 2014 album Dharma Rain, on the Udana Music label) starts shimmering slowly, forming a new circle in the center of the musical picture. The rain is refreshing. This final track is a whole different style of music, suddenly we are in the movies, orchestral strings, rich full sudden cinematic velocity, is that a gigantic cathedral organ, with shimmering bowed strings? “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” (7:38) delivers a romantic tone, strings and rich orchestral arrangements. Maybe this is a ballet about the joy of feeling good.
A universal singularity of events contradicting the possibilities of multiple eternal recurrences ::
Each of these tracks speak of mastering the heaviest of burdens, the notion of a universal singularity of events contradicting the possibilities of multiple eternal recurrences. Music exploring the acceptance of the remaining tragedy of wisdom. Each track is full of glorious unique characteristics, as if different spirits wrote parts of each of them. There is one guy doing all this, yet to me it sounds like there could be a thousand musicians and composers employed here, the sound is very powerful and detailed, each track shows perfection. Just listen.
Chronology is music that comes from timeless attention and awareness, acknowledging thousands of years of human experience, rendered by electronic synthesizers, sometimes with a Haken Continuum Fingerboard, joined at different times by the cello, the shakuhachi flute, the (low) Irish whistle, the strings of a koto, the ethereal delight of wordless vocals, and the infinite entrancing realms of hand percussion.
“Chronotope” refers to the essential unity of space and time, a concept with numerous expressions in literature, physics and the arts. The music of Chronotope Project explores this time-space confluence and invites the listener on ambient journeys of deep texture infused with gentle pulsing rhythms and soulful melodies.
Jeffrey Ericson Allen is an Oregonian composer, cellist and electronic music recording artist with an extensive and eclectic background in classical, new acoustic and theatrical music production. Chronotope Project represents his most recent expression as a creator of contemporary progressive ambient music.
Chronology is available on Spotted Peccary. [Bandcamp | Site]
