Available to listen and purchase at Landschaft at Bandcamp
Release date: 25 January 2010
Format: CDR in a Super Jewel Case. Cover and disc artwork, typography and verse by Landschaft.
The Dark Seasons Triptych, a collection comprising: Part I, "The Beginning of the New Winter"' part II, "Walpurgisnacht", part III "Zamek". Each of my albums suggested a connectedness. I have reworked and grouped them as this triptych
I have had the pleasurable luxury of living for several months with these two recent releases from Landschaft before embarking upon this review. Two shorter format albums, both spanning around thirty perfect minutes in duration, which together I consider an indefectible musical diptych - even though one of them is also a triptych, but let's not let numbers get in the way here.
If you have been following Landschafts output over the last two years or so, you may also feel upon listening to this work, that it has all been leading up to this. In many ways almost an expected pleasure to engage with this subtle level of refinement. I say an expected pleasure, because there are no hidden suprises here, rather an acute sense of vision coming into focus, building upon the achievements of Walpurgisnacht by stepping back from it and becoming subtly introvert and tenuously focussed. Again, these albums define spaces outside of our normal experiences, but by almost paradoxical means, Landschaft has formed connections to what I can only describe as the poignant edge of the soul. So, instead of space music, here we have soul music - but perhaps that is indeed two sides of the same coin.
The sounds we have here, softly woven orchestral ambience, counterpoints between melodic harmonies and strangely floating, supporting yet discordiant streams, sometimes conjures thoughts of Benjamin Britten in suspended animation. While there is a pronounced similarity between the two works Landsor is the more anxious of the them, as diamond sharp edges sweep along the polished curves. These works may be of short duration, but over and over again I refused to believe the display on my CD player as it halted around the 28:00 mark, and I even examined the discs for hidden tracks. The point here being, that this suspension effect is in full effect, an almost magical warping of time, a distillation of essence so softly executed that it still confounds me.
If it provides any further insight into the grace of this music, I listened to Dark Seasons every night for at least a month as a precursor to sleeping as I begun a course of dreamwork and was always launched into the night through deeply fascinating hypnagogic states - surround sound vision! I can highly recommend this music for meditative purposes.
I hear rumours from the Landschaft camp that he is planning new recordings in this vein using live instrumentation to enhance these technologically based recordings. Give the man an orchestra now!