It has been a while since I was first amazed by Principles of Flight when they released their debut album Night Time Lullabies back in December of 2006. Nearly 2 and half years later Pierre Delort & Remy Maurin are back with their follow up album Chaos Opera. When the debut is so good the second album can always be tricky. Stay with the same sound then people will call you boring, repetitive & lacking in ideas. Stray too far from your original sound and the people who loved your first album may easily hate your second. Successful artists in this reviewer’s humble opinion manage to keep the atmosphere of their first album but build on it with fresh ideas and more experience technically leading to better production. I believe that Principles of Flight have succeeded very well indeed. Chaos Opera has managed to keep everything I loved about the first album, the concept, the story telling feeling, the mix of up-tempo tracks and downtempo intermissions, the energy & the mix of beats are great. It has also managed though to build on Night Time Lullabies, the production seems cleaner, the fullon baselines while still integral, and fit so well that at times you’ll never notice them; none of them are dominant like many of the high tempo Psytrance that is released nowadays. The psychedelic level I believe has been raised as well if you are crazy chaotic sounds that sound like little monsters hiding just behind that tree then you’ll agree with me that the trippiness here is fantastic. At times I get the feeling that I am listening to a movie soundtrack, with the orchestral feel there & the progression of each track & of the album as a whole I can picture the story in my head.

I listened to the album a few times before I read the story in the booklet to see what story my head created before my feeling was distorted by someone else’s words. I imagined dark lands full of dense forests, small towns and morose inns. I imagined traveling through this land with strange creatures lurking in the forest and in the bars, eyes on me all the time. I imagined a journey to find something lost, a journey with stranger creatures becoming more common and forbidden enjoyment working its way out. When I did finally read the story in the booklet I was surprised to see that although there were more details (and of course characters) the story felt like I had imagined, a sign I think of music well made around Pierre and Remy’s concept.

The start of the story for me describes the atmosphere of the album very well. It is dark yet innocent, classical yet contemporary, mature yet it has a youthful glow. I am really enjoying the sounds used here and the number of layers. I notice new things on every listen, something I often find with ambient albums but much less often with trance albums. Someone once asked me for recommendations for trance with dark ambient atmospheres. At the time my mind went blank as I tried desperately to think of this album. Really this is the best description I can think of, great high energy trance music with dark ambient atmospheres. The best thing is that they probably never had that in mind and it has evolved naturally with better results than I could have imagined.

I really can’t recommend this enough. Any fans of Principles Of Flight – Night Time Lullabies should really enjoy this, as I said above it is a brilliant follow up, not to similar to the debut with fresh ideas & cool new concepts but it still has that POF air about it that will have made you fall in love with Night Time Lullabies. If you have never heard Night Time Lullabies but you like conceptual Psytrance albums with a dark edge (I have called this dark a few times but it is so far away from what is known as dark psy) and a hell of a lot of psychedelic goings on then you would do well to get this & Night Time Lullabies at the same time. Listen to the debut first as this album is even better.

As an album it is amazing as you really must listen to it as a whole to get the whole thing but even on such great albums there are standout tracks. If the first 10 tracks are amazing then The Chase is out of this world, mind blowingly orgasmic stuff! Combined with A Colourful End it feels like one long track which twists and turns throughout. For a track that starts out energetic it is amazing how it manages to build in energy throughout, the sort of paradoxical building that seems to build and build yet stay the same all the way. There are tracks that no matter where you are when you listen to them you have to pull that stupid “I’m loving this face” and do some weird dancing either head bobbing or something with your hands. The embarrassment of looking like a weirdo at the station is far outweighed by my enjoyment of this track. Dance like there is nobody watching no matter where you are. In A Colourful End the beats change into a drum & bass style and satisfies my hunger for a genre I love but which I feel always sounds the same. These I do believe will be the best tracks I hear this year. Of course I’d love to be proven wrong but it will take something really special to beat these 10/10 tracks. There could have been no better way to finish an album than this. My pattern so far has been to repeat these tracks then start the whole album again.

Principles Of Flight - Chaos Opera

If you are one of many who misses the story telling contribution of The Misted Muppet’s epic album, From the Legend, this is what you have been waiting for all of these years! As a follow-up to Principle of Flight’s debut storytelling album, Night Time Lullabies, this is stronger, heavier and even more epic-action packed in your face with loads of cliffhanger moments. It’s mad in emotion as you can feel the intensity of the main character rescuing his sister from the terrible creatures of death and heavy in sensation as he travels through land, sea and forests.

Where their debut NTL had a more Full-On touch and softer approach, Chaos Opera has a hard hitting Techno vibe to a FullOn-PsyTrance realm. As usual the artwork by Nicolas is beautiful and soft and Pierre's stories are exiting and enchanting for both young and old. There are loads of theatrical scenes scattered through the 12 chapters to be experience under the hard grey driving power that is the main sound theme of Chaos Opera. When experiencing the music from deep inside, you will be able to hear and see a magnificent and intense story being told that will for sure expand your existence and thrill you with imagination. It can get tiring as a whole, but still you won’t get enough of its juice because there are many emotions and areas to explore. The guys behind PoF spent more than 2 years perfecting the Chaos Opera story, artwork and music, so I would think that if you like what you hear you would take the effort of buying the music so that you will support the artists and encouraging them to make a third story for us to experience and love. This is magic, this is driving psychedelia with a storytellers touch.

8.9/10 - Because it's a wonderful and exiting story but wears you out.