PLANETARY DUST

'Planetary Dust' - Senmuth (5/10)

After a growing line of weaker Senmuth albums, 'Planetary Dust' seems like a welcome salvation. As an artist that relies heavily on the art of 'ambience' to make up a substantial portion of his discography, this album does seem to stand out as far as his ambient work is concerned. While this is certainly not an excellent album or even 'great' album, it does distinguish itself from alot of the less thematic ambient work Senmuth has released.

The general theme that binds this album together is that of the outer rim of the solar system. Keeping in tow with the subject matter, the music here gives a very lonely, spacy and desolate feel. With each track, Senmuth explores a different planet or moon through the music here, which can be easily described as ambient industrial. While there are certainly sounds here that evade either of those styles, 'Planetary Dust' does appear to have more of a cohesive and uniform sound than most other Senmuth records. Alot of the tracks here don't have any structure, but instead end up as sound experiments, to some extent. The opening track is a fair example of this, relying more on the sound and timbre of the music, rather than the melody or composition of the piece.

An obvious highlight here is the piece 'Sycorax,' which incorporates a hefty dose of celtic influence. Bagpipes (or at least, a synthesized bagpipe emulation) are used here very liberally, and give a very catchy hook to the music. Barring that, there are quite a few other ethnic leads that are thrown in amongst the ambient work, including some oriental woodwind work and Indian percussion. The thing this album really lacks however, is songwriting itself. While there are a few scarce melodies here and there, the music feels very dry and could really use some life and beauty to it.

The music on 'Planetary Dust' cannot be considered out of the ordinary for Senmuth, but the album does enjoy a greater sense of flow and album cohesion that the typical release from this Russian one man project. In any case, there is some very dark ambient and industrial material here, and a fan of both genres should check out this piece of music.

What a surprise...The third satellite of Jupiter inspires to Senmuth a track made of space sounds, very far from his usual techno-ethnic stuff. "Amalthea" sounds like Edgar Froese was behind the door. For a fan of the Pink period of Tangerine Dream like me, this is a fantastic beginning of a travel to the borders of the solar system.

"Jupiter" follows with continuity. The sounds are stronger, like Senmuth is wishing to underline the dimensions of the giant planet respect to its satellite. The absence of rhythm and drums is what makes this music perfect to represent a space travel. Unfortunately after 3 minutes of great space-rock the drumming arrives. It's not disturbing. It's very appropriate instead, only it makes me aware that I'm not listening to Zeit. The reason why the drumming doesn't disturb is that there's atotal absence of melody, so even with a rhythm, and later a guitar solo, the music remains very dark and doesn't land back to Earth.

After Jupiter comes "Saturn", of course. Very dark keyboards give the sensation of something going to happen like in a sci-fi/horror movie. When square waves arrive together with the drumming it's like a story has begun. I didn't expect an album like this from Senmuth.

Things don't change much on "Titan" the biggest moon of Saturn. But like Earth, this has an athmosphere and liquids on its surface. This track begins very close to Zeit, but the similarities with Earth have probably inspired a more terrestrial musical approach so after the first minute we can find the usual techno-ethnic Senmuth which lead to "Cordelia", the innermost moon of Uranus. It's a good track but it seems that the spacial inspiration at this point is going missed. In the last two minutes the rhythm stops and we take off again.

"Uranus" is never a good title for a track in English, but we can't miss a planet because of its name. It's a powerful track in the Senmuth's industrial-metal mood. Nothing special, to be honest.

Another small satellite of Uranus inspires a quite good track: "Sycorax". The music is dark even if the harmonics transform the chords into major. Good but non-essential I can say.

"Nayada" is the russian incorrect transcription of Naiad, the innermosgt moonof Neptune. This is an intense industrial-metal track. I prefer the most spacey moments, but effectively this is a good track which turns back into spacey for the last two minutes.

"Neptune" is not very different from the previous track. Noisy and chaotic industrial metal.

"Nereis" is one of the two big satellites discovered by William Herschel. The music that it inspired to Senmuth is dark electronic. A good track but there are tons of tracks like this in the huge Senmuth's discography.

"Charon" was considered the cold moon of Pluton, now the second is no longer a planet so the two are asteroids orbiting very close one to the other. few more than two minutes of excellent space rock in a TD mood. If all the album was of thin kind I would have given it a very high rating.

"Pluton" is, as one can expect, the darkest track of the album and also the longest. The distortion in the background is what makes it different from any TD song. It would have been an epic with a bit less of distortion and a bit more of spacey sounds. Some spacey moments in the middle of the track which make evident the 'structure' while the square waves add a touch of krautrock. However it doesn't stop from being a Senmuth track, even when an unusually trivial passage (C major/A minor) seems to lead this track on a brighter side, but it's just a short glance of light between the darkness.

In the end, this is not a usual Senmuth's album, and this is what makes it so good. Not a masterpiece but it shows which potentialities this russian artist has.

I was looking forward to finally check out a couple of albums from this intriguing Russian one-man project that is known for the high amount of releases, the original ambient music, the diversified culture and science topics, the great cover artworks and the elevated degree of creativity. I didn't know where to begin and "Planetary Dust" was somehow the first album that I found on the internet as I was looking for an entire "Senmuth" release.

Even though the average rating of this particular disc is surprisingly low, I must admit that I like the sound, atmosphere and cosmic topic of the album. The record works much more on a mysterious atmosphere rather than trying out weird and progressive sound collages. From time to time, the keyboards add some little and well used space sounds that remind me of "Voivod's" dystopian masterpiece "Phobos" but there also some folk samples in a couple of tracks that could have been inspired by the latest works of "Ayreon" such as "01011001". We hear many different samples on this record from tribal folk drums in "Cordelia" to pipers in "Sycorax". From weird and mysterious calm tracks like the eerie "Jupiter" to heavier and more rhythm orientated stuff like the majestic "Neptune", the album varies quite a lot but always respects the main topic and atmosphere. This may be one of the most complete and consistent space concept albums I have ever heard and the tension is kept high on an almost constant level for far over one hour of running time. Add to this that the sound samples never sound too artificial and that the production quality is surprisingly elevated for a low budget Russian one man project like this.

I may not always be in the mood to listen to this record on a regular basis, but when I feel the need to listen to some experimental, innovating and progressive space ambient music, "Senmuth" will from now on always be my first choice and is a great modern alternative to the legendary albums of the progressive rock scene. I can just warmly recommend this record to any fan of the space or science-fiction topic. This rather original record could easily be a truly great soundtrack for a weird experimental science-fiction movie. I feel that "Planetary Dust" is quite underrated for no apparent reason. If you have the chance to listen to this album or purchase it, don't hesitate if my review intrigued you just a little bit.

Originally published on www.metal-archives.com on July 29th of the year 2011.