Customer Reviews

Gnayse

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're a fan of floating synth pads tinged with dissonance, and subtle melodies that shift between discorporation and doubt, then this album will be perfect for you. Add twittering rhythm tracks and you've got the range of Bola's sound world. Whether it's populated by seraphs, androids, insects or bioluminescent squid is impossible to guess. This artist has always been too subtle for representation.

Some reviewers have said Gnayse is their least favorite Bola album. I've been listening for a year and disagree. Over time, Gnayse has become my pick for the best album of Bola's entire career, supplanting Fyuti and everything else that came before.

Like Arovane, Bola is an IDM composer who has managed to create his own harmonic language: his music is instantly recognizable. But where Arovane is contrapuntal and bristling in ways that remind me of Stravinsky's stressed metal chessboard, Bola prefers rich chords that shift like ice floes. His soundworld lives at the intersection between gorgeous and chilling.

His chord progressions are heartbreaking simply for being sensuous while avoiding any feeling of resolution. They seem to mistrust their own beauty, sidestepping forward movement as utterly as life does permanence.

People who feel the melodies on Gnayse are less interesting than those on earlier albums might be missing the point: Gnayse is an extended variation on a musical device called the suspension, which baroque composers often used to convey sadness. Bola's using the same device but doing something very different.

A suspension is a harmonic tone which, held after a chord change, becomes nonharmonic and is then resolved. Chains of suspensions are perpetual, so that new notes bloom into dissonance as old ones find repose. Typically, a chain of suspensions moves downward like a staircase. On Gnayse, it does and doesn't.

The opening cut, "Eluus," seems straightforward, but only at first: It begins with a somber descending melody that suggests Arvo Part's "Miserere." Long low tones enter in counterpoint, rendering the first melody's meaning far less simple. Filtered echoes emerge, changing in the background: They brighten in timbre, creating a third level of tension. Soon after, insect whirrings assemble into rhythmic patterns. Then a whispered tone emphasizing a major seventh -- a sharp dissonance made delicate -- repeats, setting off kaleidoscopic suspensions over a drone. Fusing classical, ambient, cinematic and jittery IDM styles, "Eluus" isn't predictable at all. In fact, I'd call it brilliant.

"Effanajor" explores suspensions, too, but this time, they rise instead of fall. Their ascent is far from heavenly: it unsettles the listener who wonders if the held tones will ever resolve. Thankfully, they don't. What remains is music that longs for the impossible -- that disclaims and negates each step of the staircase it climbs.

In every cut, Bola reveals his gift for original progressions. Common tones persist, but their meaning changes perpetually, suggesting melancholy, skepticism, unrest. Even the lushest timbres seem ironic or reluctant.

Beauty is never more alluring than when it proves fleeting -- when it slowly becomes something strange and faraway, so that the listener holds onto each sound as if it were the last s/he might ever hear. Listen intently and Gnayse can have that effect. You, too, might feel compelled to place this album on repeat, aspiring to eye-crinkling heights just out of reach.

Bola's latest album finds him up to the same old tricks. That is, beautiful ambient textures, intricately produced sonic worlds full of detailed electronic sounds, mournful melodies, and some very complex beats. Eluus, the opening track, is the perfect synthesis of each of these elements. Gnayse was definitely a standout album for 2004. There is a fair amount of rather sterile material released under the IDM label, but thankfully Bola retains the organic, human element amidst his array of synthesizers. His jazz influences are particularly apparent on Gnayse, although not in such obvious ways as swing rhythms. Stylistically, this album isn't much of a departure from Fyutti. It feels like a continuation.

The bottom line is, this is a great album that really does the IDM thing right. So many albums of this style have the tendency to leave the listener with a cold, unemotional feeling. It's refreshing to listen something full of life. Synthetic music with musical expression - what a concept.

This is easily the best album by british-born electronic music producer Bola. The name play of cause suggests spaghetti bolagnayse, but there is little humour or lightheartedness in the album content. The dark, still textures render the concept of a place - lonely, dark, sterile, but beautiful in it's solace. If you've never experienced Bola before - this is his most consistent, worthwhile album - less hit-and-miss than any of the others, and with an ambiance of radiant harmony and blind strange stillness. Beautiful, cold, sublime. Enjoy.

3 1/2

Bola have always been a cut above your typical electronic outfit, belonging to that rare category of techno musicians who elevate their craft past the stereotypical qualities which often plague the genre, turning glitch effects into haunting, resonant meditations on pace. Although not nearly as liberating as some of our more aggressive IDM artists, the signature sound and detailed textures pervading this man's work ensures his place amongst the top of organic electronica. Gnayse may lack the solidity of some other releases, but even in the underdeveloped segue tracks are we able to hear an integrity of sound bridging together to form an enriching audio whole. Bola's self-contained style may sound too methodical for romantic ears, but give the album a complete open-minded run through and you'll be hard pressed to find more simultaneously intelligent, catchy, and involving computer music - there are slightly more solid album's to begin with though.