My compliments. This is a Masterpiece!
Inspiring electronics, a wide, finely tuned electronic sound research and an irresistible Jean-Michel Jarre flavor are the 1st, bit impressions when you start to play Rear view mirror, by Patric Bakkenist and Scott Hill. This album must be listened to while laying on a summer night green field, where you may see the moon and the stars play with the clouds, while you have your portable hi-fi and earphones... Relaxed, charming, with an unforgettable taste for the choice of sounds, complex as a soundtrack and fascinating as the summer night I said above. Be prepared, because you're going to fluctuate in an amniotic fluid, made of an unforgettable sound experience.
The album starts with a delicious rhytmated ouverture, contact, with echoes of the immortal Jeam Michel Jarre's Rendez-vous, with deep, melancholic, spacey atmospheres who will catch immediately the listener's attention and will let it make a space and time travel without any need to move from home. An oceanic, calm, relaxed beauty will get you, then, with the sea melody of "Dolphindance", where dolphins will gently play with you in a submarine environment, and sing their liquid, electronic song. Dolphindance evolves along the way, as a classic music composition, and become a rhytmated atmosphered song with some slight Oxygene and Equinoxe flavor...
At this moment, the prepared listener will notice how many times I say the name JMJ. Patric and Scott aren't just clones of Jean Michel Jarre. They're fine composers, with tasteful arrangements, original melodies and deserves to be his heir in the electronic music hall of fame. This album is the album we always waited for and that JMJ never composed. Same amazing style, but evolved to become even more mature, even more charming. And this becomes evident in songs like Chants Resonique, where the album guides the listener in action, deeply inside a modern sci-fi movie soundtrack tune, impression enforced by the other excellent tracks The Wizard, electronic with jazzy flavors, as an extraterrestrial lounge. And also from tracks as Attitude X and Metrics part 1, very good sci-fi themes I would use in a cool people party, rich and sofisticated, rhytmated and cool. The Soundtrack impression is so strong to reach it's clue moment with Incognito (the majestic ending of a modern electronic orchestra) and to even have an epilogue for the story: the last track, sleep well, soft and relaxing, melancholic and somehow positive...
All the songs are very well melted in the same "universe", perfectly representing an ideal story. I specially recommend Dominion 3, a top quality rhytmated electronic song and good both as soundtrack and as a stand-alone song.
But everything in this album, from the more distant echo of a chime to the more evident and modern synths, to the ambient, spacey sounds, the environmentals... Everything is going to let you dream with open eyes, to let you make a travel in the Universe and go even further away, where no man has gone before...
My compliments to Patric Bakkenist, Scott Hill and all the others who worked on this album: is a masterpiece! I can't wait to hear your next album, Guardian Angel.
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A lush, lyric experience that is totally transporting.
In this album, "Rear View Mirror" by Patric Bakkenist, one enters a magical world where we are washed with electronic snow, fire birds, wind, choirs, deserts, secrets and whispers, deep sea creatures, fantasies and hopes, bells and rhythms, moods and atmospheres, a sense of introspection that connect to the hint in the title, looking through the mirror of a moving conveyance, looking obliquely in a moving vehicle of our times. The first track introduces us to the means by which we are to experience this amazing album, with a display of the various agents used to connect, and to the general atmosphere of the album. In the second track, enigmas of the deep are sustained in a low bass ostinato, while a dissonant metallic fish flows through the ocean's depths. The 3rd track, an electronic choir, dramatic "voices" are heard. In the 4th rapid arpeggios with a single note in the background precede a majestically paced melody with soft "wind" instruments that can be heard for a moment. One forgets that these sounds are totally electronic as one is transported to an environment that is so inviting, so interesting and varied, so musical, that the potential distance or alienation of the electronic medium is simply not present. Rather it is maximized to create a lush, lyric experience that is totally transporting. Obvious knowledge, creativity, talent and technical mastery have been utilized in creating this album as a means to transmitting a love of life and its infinite enigma and variety.
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