All instrumental melodic rock songs played on synthesizers.
Aaah, finally a synth CD where the player actually knows how to play piano. In most of the contemporary synth music, the musicians are not very technically proficient at playing notes, most are just knob twiddlers, so it’s refreshing to hear cool melodies played on the synthesizer.
Tempustry is essentially Allen Brunelle who plays all the keyboards. Allen is a multi- instrumentalist who plays keyboards, bass, and drums. Allen’s main instrument is the drums and is currently drummer for Celtic, Gothic, World Music, Doom Metal band, Todesbonden, and was drummer for Dark Aether Project, King’s Ransom, and toured the Americas with Prog biggies, Illuvatar.
“Le Voyage Du Temps” is a CD of melodic synth music. If you are looking for dark, harsh, abstract, noisey, scary electronics, this is NOT the CD for you. The music is well thought out, composed, and performed. As a point of comparison, this CD sounds like synthesist Michael Garrison (circa1979-1983), melodic and cool but not sappy like Vangelis; nor is this meandering mellow new age music. Eventhough the music is very melodic, it has a cool vibe, kind of like soundtrack music for a chase scene or the soundtrack for a James Bond or spy movie. The music is structured with a very song oriented format of verse/chorus, verse/chorus which is refreshing compared to most jammy,formless synth/space music. Also, Allen put a lot of thought into arranging the instrumentation: there’s a rhythm track, a bass line, chords, and melodies.
The sound quality of the CD is excellent. Allen has quite an impressive collection of analog synths which includes: Roland Jupiter 8, Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, Micro Moog, ARP Odyssey, Roland TR-808. Unfortunately Allen doesn’t use all these analogs, but he does use on the CD: Roland SH-09, Micromoog, Roland TR-808, Roland SH-101, Yamaha SY-77, Yamaha TG-77.
On tunes “Driven” and “Space Race”, Allen shows one of his influences, Depeche Mode, where he uses an industrial sound effect for the rhythm track.
I like all the songs and there’s not a bad one in the bunch. I even found myself humming some of the melodies.
So summing up, if you’re looking for Tangerine Dream Pheadra, don’t buy this CD, if you’re looking for more rhythmic and melodic, 1979-1981, Tangerine Dream before they went into total decline, buy this CD. I have purchased and received many freebie CD’s of independent space rock and synth music and this is a CD that I will actually play over and over again.
Read more...
From Aural Innovations #32 (November 2005)
Tempustry is Allen Brunelle's solo project apart from his occasional duties as drummer for Architectural Metaphor and Dark Aether Project, and though the music on Le Voyage du Temps has some affinities with the former, most of the songs veer far closer to Jean-Michel Jarre/Michael Garrison territory. With a penchant for symphonic bombast and an obsession with portamento-drenched monophonic synth leads, much of Le Voyage plays out like clockwork, with ultra clean production, sparkling textures, and nouveu romantic aspirations of cosmic grandeur. Pieces like "Space Race," "Spindrift," and "Skyward," while nicely programmed and artfully structured, simply recapitulate the conventional synth wizard magic invoked by numerous Schulze apprentices (including Jarre himself, to some degree) since the late 70s. To Brunelle's credit, his use of drum machines adds a much needed rhythmic element to what has become a nearly homogenized plug-in genre of music. The aptly titled "Driven," for instance, propels the listener across the mechanized autobahn of early Kraftwerk, with a nod to the digital highways explored by such 90s speedfreaks as 808 State, Orbital and Eat Static. For connoisseurs of electronica and similar synth-based genres, Le Voyage has the cardinal virtue of doing it all right - and pretty much right by the book when it comes to post-Schulze space music design. Which is to say, if you like the past masters and grand gurus of kosmische musik, you'll like Tempustry's Le Voyage du Temps.
Reviewed by Charles Van de Kree
Read more...