(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Paul Haslinger is, after
Klaus Schulze,
the
Tangerine Dream
member who
produced the most important solo works.
Haslinger had debuted with Future Primitive (Wildcat, 1994), an
album that swings from extreme violence to extreme peace.
Future Primitive is a demonic orgy of percussions combined with
a funky, Talking Heads-ish tempo, a heavy-metal riff and human screams.
The following track is a flute and chant interlude, Of Human Bondage,
but then the adrenaline starts kicking again, as the formidable beat of
Danc'In-D M'chine whirls human voices, heavy breathing and guitar riffs.
Again, this is followed by a mellower track,
Urban Hypnotics, a dance shuffle sailed by noisy samples and melodic
patterns.
And, again, this runs into a maelstrom of evil and pounding polyrhythms,
screams, metallic percussions and electronic distortions,
Guidance Is Internal.
Then the album loses a lot of steam, but Haslinger still manages to score with
the middle-eastern tinged Saint & Robot,
the evocative and percussions-drenched Nomads In the Age of Wireless,
While not always perfect, the album defined once and forever Haslinger's
artistic manifesto.
Haslinger jumped onto the transglobal bandwagon of the 1990s with a visionary collection of futuristic collages, World Without Rules (RGB, 1996).
The title-track employs exotic
polirhytms, Middle-eastern wails, tolls of Japanese koto, Indian percussion
and samples of Verdi choirs. What is unique about Haslinger's experiments
is the sheer violence of the sound, worthy of a heavy-metal band.
Nonetheless,
Global Ghetto, despite pivoting around an Arabic leitmotif, unleashes dizzying disco-music.
Desert Diva best
summarizes and divulges the method, which is one and trine:
symphonic, operatic and funky.
Affinities with the jazz-rock of Jon Hassell's
"fourth world" surface in
Urban Source Code and Bebop In Baghdad,
pieces that rely on anemic horn phrases and a maze of percussion.
Far-eastern spirituality is desecrated in
Dismissal Of The Hemisphere, drowning in a whirlwind of
Tibetan bells and tablas.
The singing is deconstructed in a cryptic stutter in Asian Blue, and then left to drift on slow waves of electronics, trumpet and trombone.
Ever more abstract,
the sound dissolves in the electronic whispers of Le Sens Du Sens,
attains the ritualistic feeling of Rainmaker's Dream and
indulges in the minimalist finale of The Closing Of The Circle.
Haslinger knows how to choose his collaborators: horn arrangements
by Mark Isham
and vocals courtesy of
Nona Hendryx...
Perhaps the polimorphic fantasy of that album is a little subdued on
Score (RGB, 1999), but the whole maintains that sense of organic and
magic. This time around Haslinger unleashes his jazz all over
his electronic and polirhythmic pastiches, starting with
Accidental Measures In Cool, the trumpet soaring in its be bop solo and
the singer absorbed in its velvety wordless "scat", and ending with
This Station, an instrumental dance track that fuses multiple genres in
a new form of disco poliphony.
Hardboiled Wonderland seems to point to a liaison of sort with Herbie
Hancock's light "fusion" of the 1970's.
Sampling rules on several compositions: on The Infinite Jest, a frantic
sound collage which sails from a tribal ovation to a street fanfare, from a
female choir to a symphonic break, from a funky horn section to a cosmic
vertigo; on The Real Question Is,
a tribal orgy merging indian and african rhythms; on Magheda,
a moving documentary of folk chants of the savannah.
This album highlights a new facet of Haslinger's musical persona, a mixture
of avantgarde composer and philosopher.
The chamber music of Fantastic Voyage
mutates into convoluted jazz-rock, the trumpet's dark call
echoed by a "noir" theme on the keyboards.
War In The Heart Of Eden
is even more somber, almost requiem-like,
a string section arising voices of the jungle, and
the noise of a helicopter arising a celestial choir.
Inbetween Nowhere is a metaphysical sonata for minimalist piano pattern,
female breathing and sinister background noises.
The album is again played mainly by Haslinger alone, with the help of
a handful of collaborators (Bumi Fian's trumpet,
Julianna Raye's voice, a tribe of Eastern Africa,
Charlie Campagna's guitar).
The ambition of the german musician is unchecked:
Haslinger is inspired equally by Miles Davis and Don Cherry, by Jon Hassell
and David Byrne, by Bill Laswell and Massive Attack.
What is unique about Haslinger is that knack for stuffing the
harmony with electronic events and then letting everything flow like
a majestic river.
Under the monicker Coma Virus, Haslinger released an album of ambient music,
Hidden (Side Effects, 1996), crossing Brian Eno's classical sound
with modern "cosmic" interpretations like
Lightwave's.
Lower Than Epsilon, the
17-minutes Arcana Mundi
and Causality are sophisticated collages of subliminal noises.
The Thirty Seals is the only track that approaches the
atmosphere of his cosmic drama.
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