Thursday, April 8, 2010

Stellar OM Source - Alliance



Self-Released, 2009

Stellar OM Source is the improvisation/devotional synth project of Christelle Gualdi. Seems far more enjoyable to me than the deeply sequenced new age tones of groups like Oneohtrix Point Never, Gualdi's work reminds me more of the synth backdrop of the Skaters, or James Ferraro when he is in one of his highest synth trances. New age-era in feeling, certainly, but there is a jazz improvisational element that makes what's happening intensely interesting and unpredictable. Cybernetic music, peaks and swells are not pre-programmed but come as a natural extensions of the human body into the technological realm. It may not be a stretch when David Keenan equated her keyboard work with Alice Coltrane. I'm not going to be so presumptuous to say that Gualdi is exactly that skilled a musician, though she is if anything excellent, and her music on occasion evokes the same rare states of transcendence. The album may seem (and still seems to me) like it starts on an awkward, atonal footing, but give it time. "Equalizer 2600" and "Time To Live" prove the album's worth.

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