AEON

Shadows Procession is the second album by the electronic progressive duo Aeon created by sound designers Stephane Rapetti and Alessandro Gadoni. This is also the second part of the "Triptyque Du Voyage" consisting of this album, Labyrinth, and Spark.

For me, this album is an improvement over the duo's debut album released back in 1999. But still, the failures that plagued that album are almost as prevalent on this album. These are basically electroacoustic sound collages. They tend to be generally rhythmic in nature, though often lack melodies (or rather one appears in the middle of the song and then promptly disappears). Each song seems to be made up of a base collage of electronics, textures, and guitar effects. Atop this base can be any sort of combination of electronics effects, guitar effects, or sound effects. Often the result is eerie sounding (an aspect I often like), but the endless repetition and the sameness from song to song just drives me to tears. Occasionally there is a glimmer of inspiration that unfolds, but then it quickly gets absorbed back into a cacophonic mess of noise.

Like their debut album, this one is also not my "cup of tea."

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.

If the modern electronic prog scene is now widely recognized thanks to the recent explorations of projects such as Zombi, Radio Massacre International and Redshift (for the legacy of the 70's Berlin "kosmische" music school) as well as thanks to Tim Hecker or Aidan Baker (for the post-rock droning / home-made electronic facet)...we must not forget the presence of a handful of discreet contemporary artists who travel on the free-form / semiclassical composite electronic music territory. With their very personal musical syncretism, without any doubt that the work of Aeon belongs to this last opened and unusual trajectory. Released in May 2013 'Spark' is the last opus which closes the long and epic tryptic started with 'Labyrinth' (1999). The conceptual setting behind spark is related to an escape from the labyrinth, to a final estate, to man's redemption in front of the enigmas of life and the immaterial essence of the spirit at its omega point (see Vernadsky's cosmogenesis). 'Spark' is a self-released by the sound-designer and multi instrumentalists Alessandro Gadoni and Stéphane Rapetti, this album reveals the more meditatively introspective dimension of Aeon if we compared the musical signature with the previous efforts turned to programmed-radical and super-active electronic inflected sound textures. Very soundtracky and colorfully emotional 'Spark' features a corpus of solemn and detached guitar tricks punctuated by various processed acoustic motives, electronic collages and molecular sound waves. In definitive the sound tapestries admit reasonable Eno-esque tendencies ('On Land' / 'An other Green World') within a strangey mind-altered dream-like dimension. An urgency, a personal if not poignant testimony and a certain fragility make this album very special. A warmly recommended listening experience.