LABYRINTH

Labyrinth is the debut album by Aeon, a progressive electronic duo of Stephane Rapetti and Alessandro Gadoni. This is also the first part of what the groups calls "Triptyque Du Voyage" which consists of this album and the albums Shadows Procession and Spark. Originally released in 1999 by Noise Museum Records, the band reissued this as a digital release on Bandcamp in 2011.

The music is an adventure in sound collages, often rhythmic, but mostly non-melodic. Atop a base collage of electronics, textures, programmed drums, and guitar effects, numerous effects and aural experimentations are scattered about and repeated. By themselves each song is rather repetitive, but occasionally a glimmer of beauty shines through or a song takes a sudden switch to liven things up. This music seems best suited as soundtrack music for films and often I'm hard pressed to keep my interest. Sometimes the scattered-about effects are disjointed and disrupt the underlying layers, sometimes rather noisily. I don't care much for the programmed drums.

Overall, I can appreciate what is going on here, but it isn't necessarily clicking with me. In other words, I'm missing the point. Perhaps "not my cup of tea" is the most fitting description I can give this.

Two stars. For fans only.