Ian Boddy & Parallel Worlds – Exit Strategy

Ian Boddy's label DiN always specialized to offer a music that transcends the usual borders of a conventional even progressive EM. Imprint of mysticism and strangeness, unique to the sound universe of the duet Ian Boddy and Bakis Sirros, Exit Strategy is an album where the musicality has only equal in the creativity of this very eclectic duo. Weaved straight from ambient sculptures with composite tones of Bakis Sirros and dressed by slow and languishing layers of Ian Boddy's caustic synth, Exit Strategy is a fascinating industrial music which nests between the heavy atmospheric zones and hesitating rhythms à la Redshift and Arc. It’s a nice dosage where the music is like anything that you never heard of. Here, as in a parallel universe!
Portal leads us to the obscure and tenebrous corrosive universe of Ian Boddy and Parallel Worlds with sombre mephistophelic mooing which float over felted percussions. Percussions / pulsations that sound like suction cups and resound in a universe streaked by harsh howling and fine crystalline rosaries which unfold in a pure abstract atmosphere where diurnal lamentations float such as wandering souls before that Portal turns to a heavy and infernal static rhythm. It’s a short but heavy moment where spirits are revolting and calming down to seep into the more musical world of Impresario. Feeding also of abstruse atmospheres and percussions to heterogeneous tones Impresario evolves between different rhythmic segments. It slowly flies away with nice synth layers, as well as pretty nice mobiles and rippling orchestrations, on a movement which takes a more livened up tangent with a heavy and slow tempo undulating beneath sinuous reverberations, stratums to dreads roaring and metallic-eclectic percussions / pulsations. It’s a heavy movement with a rhythm a bit blurred where reminiscences of Arc and Redshift are made hear on murky pulsations and a delicate devilish piano which unfolds a light snigger over a rhythmic structure in perpetual renewal. The intro of Soliloquy wraps us with a soft serene veil. Far away and just in background we are hearing tick-tocks which beat in an arrhythmic way and a beautiful bass which draws a slightly heavy structure while Soliloquy deviates on a slow soft and sensual rhythm draped of nice comforting stratums, although always a little bit dark, where the piano escapes and mixes its notes with beautiful crystalline percussions. It’s a very beautiful track, between beauty and blackness, that dissipates the dark mists of the first 2 tracks and which is a great interlude before diving into Entwined, a long ambient track full of dark atmospheres where heterogeneous tones furnish a long movement filled of dark breaths which expire in a sombre garden infested by metallic locusts.
The intro of Exit Strategy soaks into a very grimy ambiance. I hear inspirations of Schmoëlling whereas the tempo livens up heavily with chords which transcend in ascending spheres. Chords which climb on a heavy and slow sinuous movement perfumed of heavy silvered layers and livened up by heterogeneous percussions and a good line of bass. The beat glides in indecision where superb and strange sonorities shape astounding percussions on an endemic structure where suave and poignant silver layers fly over nice melodious snippets. Hidden is a little in the same mould as Entwined. It’s a dark and ambient track which sets shape with a nebulous intro where fine scattered pulsations awaken a gloomy world with lugubrious layers and lamentations of synth to metal breezes which float and roar vaporously among ringing hoops to musical clickings. Quietly Hidden goes out in the intro of Return and its uncertain rhythm which pulses in a very intimist ambiance where mellotrons sing beautiful poignant melodies on a hesitating tempo. Oscillating between two rhythmic phases, ambient and divided rhythm, Return progresses with slow wolves which steps over a cadenced evolution constantly slowed down by eclectic musical elements and restrained élans that mellotron synth movements embrace and enfold of their vaporous musical mists. That’s a wonderful way to conclude a very album of music always to the antipodes of its rhythms and harmonies.
Not to doubt it, Exit Strategy is at height as what we can expect from a duo as eclectic as much unpredictable as intriguing. It is a very good album where the darkness meets the melodious lights of day sieved by the heavy veils of mellotron and synth as misty as celestial. Fluctuating between slow heavy and straight rhythms as well as darken atmospheres of the unicorns of obscurity, Boddy/Sirros succeed on creating a unique musical tapestry where Bakis Sirros sonorous peculiarities are moulding marvellously to Ian Boddy's very avant-gardist musical vision. Exit Strategy is an album to listen to with wide open ears and eyes will follow this amazing musical route.
rating 5 out of 6. www.gutsofdarkness.com / Sylvain Lupari