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2014 instrumental Electronic album from two Polish Synthesizer musicians, with its influences lying in the Germanic Klaus Schulze & Wolgang Bock styles!
The ‘Stratomusica Suite’ is subtitled as being “Music For The Balloon Mission To The Edge Of Outer Space”. Przemyslaw Rudz is already well-known to CDS Towers’ customers, being one of our consistently best-selling modern artists working in the “Berlin School” style, and certainly our biggest selling Polish Synth musician by a long way. Jozef Skrzek I don’t know much about at all, but I can tell you he really works well in partnership with Rudz on this rather excellent album.
Now, we all know that past Rudz works have been influenced in the main by artists like Jean-Michel Jarre, Klaus Schulze, TANGERINE DREAM and Vangelis, but the first name I thought of as I played this CD through was one that most of you who are into the German synth music scene of the late 70’s and early 80’s will remember for one absolutely stunning album on Telefunken Records called ‘Cycles’ – it is Wolfgang Bock!
‘Cycles’ is that amazingly flowing “Berlin School” album that I for one would love to see on CD, but it has never happened L
However, parts of this ‘Stratomusica Suite’ album does go some way to compensate for that missing piece of classic Germanic synth music on CD that featured fluid synths, flowing rhythms and harmonic keyboard melodies flying on top!
‘Stratomusica Suite’ will show in your player as one long near fifty-seven minute track, but the back cover displays the suite split into six parts with individual track titles. So, in the absence of any index points programmed on the disc, Przemyslaw has kindly provided timings for each component part so I could be certain where tracks started and closed for my review of the complete production, and saving me having to guess as to where each past starts and finishes purely from the music as I heard it…and the embarrassment if I got it wrong J
‘Prologue’ opens the album in an abstract atmospheric style for the first four minutes then moves into sounds of space drones and distant electronic rippling, bird-like effects. That is quickly followed with waves of streaming string synths that gently bathe the emptiness, with warm swathes of flowing melodic-ish sounds ever-so subtly building the sonic picture as the duo paint the sounds in different directions into a fine, ever expanding soundscape.
‘Towards The Destiny’ comes in at just past the twelve-minute mark, adding a new synth tone to the gradually expanding sonic image, and at just past the thirteen-minute mark a sequencer line can be heard as it slowly drives over the horizon line. As the initial set of string synths has drifted away, new ones follow in behind the sequencer rhythm as it gets closer and higher in the mix. As the sixteen-minute point approaches the first real “tune” of the album reveals itself in the form of a suitably high-register synthesizer theme. Now things are really starting to develop, with the strings subtly building in intensity at the back of the mix, and the rhythm is getting into a real grooving flow. As the melody-line drives in, it starts to weave around the central rhythm quite beautifully, ebbing and flowing just at the right times, with a counter lower-register synthesizers starting to drum up themes of their own and adding to the hypnotic effect being created by the music.
At the twenty-one minute mark a metallic dragging sound can be heard in the distance and this signals an on-coming change in events as the flow starts motoring into overdrive and the main high-flying synth melody line seems to be approaching it’s peak point.
As the twenty-third minute passes, the groove dies away to leave us floating in space until the start of the 3rd movement: ‘Moments Of Suspension’, where a deep droning effect draws up alongside. Different keyboard melodies hover and intermingle up to the half-hour mark where a new resonant drone pulls us towards a complete bolt out of the blue just past the thirty-fourth minute, where the “Bock” factor arrives with … ‘Suddenly Jet Streamed’ as it literally blasts in with these massive waves of thick string synth swells overlaid with a high register Mini-Moog-like synth melody line blowing out an improvised tune over the top, with pulsating, at times kind of distorted rhythms driving the exciting passage of music along at pace. The huge jabs of string synth chords deliver a sense of real intensity to the track and the keyboard soloing and percussive rhythms were being dominated by it at times. However the string sounds do move to the back of the mix from time to time and allow the main synth lead to really take off and deliver to its full potential of powerful improvised melody.
All this rides on through to the forty-two minute mark where we go back into sonic space territory for a while with: ‘At The Gates of Cosmic Mysteries’ where phasing, swaying synth chords gently provide a backdrop for a lone high-register synth melody to filter in and out of the mix up to the forty-five minute mark where it enters a cavernous place with dripping synth effects falling all round. A percussive rhythm breaks the watery surface and together with some really smooth chords moves into a flowing groove that takes the album past the forty-nine minute mark where it plunges back into deep, dark space and then back into the damp atmospheres of the earlier cavernous area.
As the fifty-two minute point approaches the album fades into: ‘Epilogue {For All The Explorers}’, a gorgeous passage of flowing, grooving percussion overlaid with angelic high-register synthesizer melodies, with rhythmic synth-bass driving the piece along. Like the earlier rhythmic passage, this one is also very hypnotic, but less intense as the string swells are kept back in the mix allowing the beautiful synth melody to soar on and fly high in a graceful, heavenly manner, to suitably take the album out on a very high note, using that old musicians' trick of going out and leaving you wanting more of a very good thing!
I thoroughly enjoyed the ‘Stratomusica Suite’ and in a way, was reminded of all other past releases by Przemyslaw Rudz, because in common with all his solo releases so far, here again he has retained the strongest melodies for the final five minutes of the album, so for me, that has kind of become a Rudz trademark.
Other PRZEMYSLAW RUDZ CD’s available at CDS Towers…
‘Cerulean Legacy’ (Jarre / Vangelis influenced - 2011) Stock # 1421820
‘Cosmological Tales’ (Jarre / Tangerine Dream influenced – 2010) Stock # 1335158
‘Discreet Charm Of An Imperfect Symmetry’ (3 Improvised Tracks - 2013) Stock # 1619864
‘Pain/Tings’ (Jarre / Teubner influenced – 2012) Stock # 1580136
‘Self-Replicating Intelligent Spawn’ (Jarre / Teubner influenced – 2011) Stock # 1398076
‘Summa Technologiae’ (Jarre / Schulze influenced – 2010) Stock # 1299746
‘Remote Sessions’ (with Vanderson - 2013) Stock # 1659824
‘Unexplored Secrets Of Rem Sleep’ (with Wladyslaw Guidonis Komendarek – 2012) Stock # 1496264
‘Stratomusica Suite’ is released on 7th July 2014.
SKRZEK & RUDZ: STRATOMUSICA SUITE Track List:
01. Prologue (00:00 - 12:20)
02. Towards The Destiny (12:21 - 23:15)
03. Moments Of Suspension (23:16 – 34:08)
04. Suddenly Jet Streamed (34:09 – 42:50)
05. At The Gates Of Cosmic Mysteries (42:51 - 51:08)
06. Epilogue {For All The Explorers} (51:09 – 56:39)
TPT - 56:39