Aes Dana – Pollen

English / Polish version

Aes Dana - Pollen
    ULTIMAE RECORDS
    Aes Dana
    Pollen
    2012

      1. Jetlag Corporation
      2. Borderline
      3. Conditioned (Album Edit)
      4. Tree.Some
      5. A Carmine Day
      6. 101 Clouds
      7. Riven
      8. The Meeting Point
      9. Horizontal Rain
      10. Low Tide Explorations

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Well, I think that it is really good that Vincent Villuis has released his latest album, POLLEN before the date of December 21th 2012, because if the end of the world predicted by the Mayans has come to fruition, we would have lost something very precious…

A mature work and creation that never gets old, technically sophisticated music, a full professionalism, grandeur, but not inflated. I know that few times Vincent has created some soundtracks for science fiction films, but I would be really happy to listen to his music to a good style documentary film like Baraka, Samsara. It seems to me that this would be the perfect combination – beautiful music and beautiful images. The term 'panoramic music for panoramic people’, which is the theme of Ultimae, is fully confirmed in the album of Aes Dana. For me, an epithet 'panoramic’ is the most suitable to the music created by Vincent. This is an artist who has an open mind, his senses are attuned to each stimulus, and his imagination can create sounds as intense as the colours of the powder during the festival of Holi in India. Ever since I have started my adventure with psychill (or anyhow you call it), and it was already a good few years ago, the whole time I was accompanied by the music of Aes Dana. SEASON 5, AFTERMATH, MEMORY SHELL, LEYLINES, PERIMETERS, and finally POLLEN. What I recognize to this day, is the fact that each of these albums are timeless, you can feel Aes Dana spirit in it that is unchanging, but paradoxically it is evolving with each new album. That is why I like to go back to Vincent’s CDs and I am sure that I will never get bored of them.

In the case of album POLLEN, moreover as in previous albums, Aes Dana once again proves that he is a musician who boldly combines the electronics (downtempo, IDM, progressive trance) with some symphonic elements, a deep meaty beat with melancholic, spatial backgrounds. Listening to tracks from the new album, I feel that I am in touch with the music of a man who like a sponge absorbes everything, what happens in his life. Every experience, image, sound, smell, taste, movie viewed, book read, chat with people later convert to the titled POLLEN, which simply is the music. Vincent Villuis for me an erudite type, which is not only a master of the sound, but also of the image. For me, his is the artist with a capital A, because through his music you can feel very clearly that he is not just a sound technician, who sitting in his quiet corner tries to develop some spotlessly clean, innovative sounds, worked out in every detail. It is primarily his artistic, curious soul that allows to combine the technically great sound with the incredible content and message. The human mind and heart, which usually fight among themselves, in the music of Aes Dana hang out the white flag and find the point of a contact. As you can see, you can reconcile two such very different worlds, and what is more, this Aes Dana procedure shows that only in this way, the brilliant music is being created.

Why Vincent Villuis has chosen the term POLLEN as the title for the new album? The answer I have found on the site of the label Ultimae: ’ Passionate about the concept of pollination and how it transposes with music, sounds, technology and humanity, the artist recorded and gathered moments of his life as he walked through cities, fields, seaside and airports. Back in the studio, he introduced these field recordings in his electronic compositions to yield tracks that are eclectic yet retain a common essence. In this configuration, man and machine are both pollinators and pollenizers; music is the pollen.’ I like that in the tracks of the album POLLEN appear a lot of progressive sounds which have a lot of energy and move us to dance, among others I mean: TREE.SOME, CARMINE A DAY. Jetlag CORPORATION gently and slowly introduces us to the material prepared by Vincent and for me it is the best start, which was to be expected as for POLLEN. With the last sounds of BORDERLINE we have more clear specific beat, and in the track called CONDITIONED we are dealing with a bit of deep techno sounds. 101 CLOUDS brings the muted pace, some majestic backgrounds that remind me the ones found many times in the tracks of Aes Dana. In RIVEN I have heard rather experimental sounds, themes, which I have not met in Vincent’s works, but THE MEETING POINT has consumed me completely. This track really has the power, although it is a bit softer than the tracks number 4 and 5, an incredible force goes from it. For me, HORIZONTAL RAIN and LOW TIDE EXPLORATIONS are the crowning worthy the new album of Aes Dana. Of course, in my conclusion of Vincent’s album, I can not fail to mention the beautiful graphic design of the album cover. In particular, its inner part with the brilliant photographs of dandelions captivated me. I really like this style of creating the covers of albums released by Ultimae, because they seem to me to be shrouded in mystery, magic; they pay attention to details, small almost microscopic elements of the world, nature, which we devote too little time.

Concluding my review of the album POLLEN, regardless of whether one believes in the afterlife, heaven, hell, the transmigration of souls, at least in my case, I hope that one day wherever I will get, the tracks of Vincent will be played there.
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9 / 10
Kasia