Title: Pillars of Creation
Artist: Amygdala
Label: BFWrecordings
Catalog number: BFW200
License: CC BY-NC-ND
Released: 2013/03/30
Amygdala is László Néder, an electronic artist from Hungary. He started his musical career as a the guitarist in several rock bands, while experimenting with electronic music “just for the living room”. In 2008 he found himself performing as an electronic artist in clubs around Budapest. In 2010 he found himself performing at one of the largest electronic music festivals in Hungary.
Pillars of Creation is his sixth release on BFW recordings. BFW recordings chose to give the release the honored position of their 200, as part of their 4th Anniversary. It’s easy to understand why this recording was chosen for this honored slot in listening to this recording. It’s a swirling mix of ambient electronica, drone and experimental music, careening from EDM to dark drones and back effortlessly that definitely rates very highly with many of the fine BFWrecordings releases.
In the hands of an artist of lesser ability, this kind of work could feel like just another re-capitulation of styles that you’ve heard a thousand times. But instead, by mixing the sounds and textures of artists as diverse as Future Sound of London, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and even Vangelis with his own sense of structure and style, he has found his own form of narrative. His own dialect to talk to you in a language that has no words, and knows no boundaries.
While building on the elements of the fine artists listed above is excellent, László doesn’t stop there. Many other elements weave their way into the fabric of this work, one of the tracks on this recording has a heavily dubstep influenced bass line, while other tracks borrow rhythmic elements from house and techno styles. But, there is no mimicking going on in the way he uses these elements: they are every bit as much a part of the Amygdala vocabulary as any of the elements he uses as his pillars.
And that is where this recording really succeeds: it is both a reference to the past, to the history of electronic music, much as a the remnants of Stonehenge offers us a reference to an ancient culture. While the newer elements build a platform on top of the pillars where we look to our future.
Amygdala: Pillars of Creation
Free / Donation
9
Downloaded and following an ancient advice, I played it twice before listening.
“It is a reference to the past, to the history of electronic music.” Agreed. And I may add J.M. Jarre to the list of heroes resurrecting here.
And it is an enjoyable release specially if you like the warm analog sounds of moogs and korgs.
That’s about it for me.
“the newer elements build a platform where we look to our future.” Future, like “in the future we’ll be surrounded by zombies”? Scary vision.
To me it sounds like the work of someone who tries to revive ‘good old times’ he never experienced. Retro oriented pattern altogether, take ‘Gamma Kentauri’ for example – pure EBM.
Nope, perhaps I don’t get the point here, but this release doesn’t kick me at all.
‘Milky Road’ is somewhat nice, I want to add.
Yes to the idea of playing without “listening”. I often listen the first couple of times, then have a release on in the background for several days / weeks before I review it. In fact, one of the things that motivates to write a review: do I find myself looking looking at my music player to check out which release is playing. If a release grabs my attention when I’m focused on other things, then it’s worth my time to write about.
Was never a huge J. M. Jarre fan, so I didn’t catch references to his work. As for the newer EBM / EDM references: Amon Tobin influence is all over TrES-04, while there a dubstep style bass line is on Paradogma (about 5 minutes in). There are similar things lurking in the fabric of the sound, but you have to go mining for them. 🙂
As for the future, I was thinking more of space… As in the space music (ie the beat-less, drone infused style that became known as Space Music ala Klaus Schulze’s Time Winds), it may be dark, it may be scary, or it may be light…who knows? But, this is one possible vision of the future, which is likely to lead to space.
But not every release is for everyone. 🙂