An unearthly beautiful album which embraces the territories of deep ambient music and poetical minimalist dreamscapes.
Frédéric Vanderlynden is a Belgian sound designer and composer of tonal ambient music. He is firstly known from the audience thanks to his solo project Virlyn. He started to publish a couple of albums as digital EP on the micro netlabels Xtraplex and Spiritech Records. At this step of development, the musical signature admitted a solid and original association between picturesque soundscaping minimalism (within a discreet cinematic approach, including various sound effects and an evocative semiclassical acoustic instrumentation) and dynamic pulsating electronic moves (IDM and in the continuation of ambient works by Aphex Twin). He has just published his first physical release for a beautiful 100XCD edition on the well established Etalabel (known for their beautiful catalogue in organic-intimate ambient releases).
This new Virlyn album delivers a wonderful and colorful collection of elegant dream-ambient pieces. Largely improvised and based on micro structured patterns, the result is astonishing and deeply personal, avoiding any kind of musical formalism. Vanderlynden focuses his interest on “sound color,” sinuous droning textures without neglecting a polyvalent use of traditional-acoustic instruments which gives to this album very particular characteristics and various expressive tendencies. Each track contains its very own and special sound identity, sometimes lysergic, dreamy and cosmically evocative (in the majestic and floating “Ran” or “Kristal”) sometimes mysteriously menacing and naturalistic (“Lilith”) or beautifully aerial (in the shoegazing free-jazzy nocturnal inflected ambient “Dawn”) with enveloping spiritual qualities (in “Mirror Part1” or in the densely orchestrated “Swan”).
The sound aesthetic and semiclassical feelings covered by glacial sonorous dronescapes can slightly remind the past works of Marsen Jules, the broken consort and Deaf Center but here the result sounds even more complex, moving and remarkable. Man Asleep is an unearthly beautiful album which embraces the territories of deep ambient music and poetical minimalist dreamscapes. A pretty exciting listening experience, largely recommended to all passionate listeners of mental soundscapes. Due to constant musical creativity, genuine originality and dense evocative textures I consider this release among the first true revelations of this year.
Man Asleep is available on Etalabel. [Release page | Bandcamp]
