A mesmerizing collision of ambient, jazz, electronics and ritualistic textures, this album unfolds like a deep-space journey that never loses its human pulse.
Trumpet drifts through electronic vastness
Mahorka has a busy schedule and quite an enormous back catalog, covering various electronic music, from ambient to dub, noise and radically experimental. Confirmed sound artists meet new promising ones in the course of indie, challenging music with no regard for major commercial tendencies. I’ve never heard of Pulsar (Leonardo Pucci) before, but I must say he perfectly teams up with Demitrio Cecchitelli. I’m more familiar with the work of Cecchitelli, notably with the sumptuous Empetus (published years ago by Midira). The addition of trumpet player Jacopo Buda to the soundscapes gives an enriched musical meaning to the album, playing the card of instrumental ambient music with partly experimental-jazzy tones and expansive improvs which evolve on dynamic electronic textures.
What we can listen to here is nothing less than a furiously enthralling and original musical trip which starts masterfully with the ethno-ritual and spaced-out “Cosmic Dream”. Such a gorgeous piece with its perpetual circular rhythms covered by inspiring and gently minimal trumpet melodic shifts. It is meticulously crafted without being purely ambient, as it conjugates a vast array of influences, from Buddhist-Zen musical attributes to early minimalism and atmospheric, then bassy, chilled-out vibes. It suggests immensity and nature-like vastness, with its colorful timbres resonating in divine harmony. It is a sprawling track with a magnificent development, always suspenseful, melodically ethereal and dynamic.
The second track (“Expanding Light”) also operates a nice syncretism and musical dialogue between acoustic ingredients, wind instruments and electronics, but here we enter a more downtempo, softly moving ambience, less lyrical and tripped-out but equally good and perfectly elaborated.
The title track (“Fade in Brighter Age”) almost provides a softly moving dream-pop quality, built on guitars, vibrant chords and slowly enveloping wind sequences, largely embracing a lonesome path and a feeling of consciousness at night.
All in all, a varied and semi-jazzy atmospheric ambient album with a flowing cinematic edge. Absolutely recommended and easily one of my personal favorites of this year. For fans of John Hassell, Harold Budd, Peter Knight, Loscil, Bersanin Quartett, Nala Sinephro, and Floating Points.
Fade In Brighter Age is available on Mahorka. [Bandcamp]
