Paul Haslinger
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Future Primitive, 7/10
World Without Rules, 8/10
Score, 7/10
Coma Virus: Hidden , 6/10
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(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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