STEPHAN MATHIEU - The Falling Rocket

The path that has, for a few years now, been leading Stephan Mathieu up the pyramid of the leading figures in contemporary ambient music doesn't seem willing to allow for any pause. As with what has happened more recently for his friend Taylor Deupree, the former microsound pioneer has gradually abandoned the abstract microcosm - by now saturated with too many formally impeccable productions that offer nothing to push the genre forward - in favour of the realm of pure atmosphere, where descriptive talent can still play a more important role than sheer innovation.

If the move to 12k for the gem "A Static Place" marked the first step in this evolution of Mathieu's soundworld, the splendid collaboration with David Sylvian on the ambient rewriting of his "Blemish" has to date been the high point of the German artist's new course - later echoed in expressionist form on the recent "Un Coeur Simple" - and now reaches a first major fulfilment with this "The Falling Rocket". The new double album - released only on Lp - marks a return to Dekorder, a label usually reserved for 12"s and minor releases by big names from the electro-experimental scene. It's a kind of refuge Mathieu has turned to after releasing the digital version of the album, to little success, through his own Schwebung.

The album thus picks up where its predecessor left off, almost definitively abandoning the microstructures of the past to aim this time for a hazy, isolationist ambient music with a cosmic aftertaste. Truth be told, we're not far from the territory explored with Robert Hampson on "Ablation", the album that this year marked the return of the Main moniker: "Gliese 229 B" could easily pass for an outtake from that experience, thanks to the delicacy of its rarefied, intertwined drones. The first disc proceeds entirely along similar lines, steeped in an intangible, astral atmosphere, which unfolds in the dim reflected light of "Keid", in the star clusters and voids of "Lacaille 8760" and in the languid spirals of "55 Cancri".

All four tracks share the same running time of ten minutes and ten seconds, a pattern that also holds for the second disc, with the exception of two opening tracks: the two minutes and ten seconds of bittersweet synthetic languor of "Denneb" and the surprising, sensational stellar ecstasy of "IK Pegasi", almost a nod to Kevin Braheny. In the beguiling, distorted contortions of "Teide 1", meanwhile, one seems to hear a dialogue between Seirom and Aidan Baker, before darkness once again reigns supreme in the tunnels of "Cha 110913".

The farewell is entrusted to a muffled drone, sole protagonist of the gentle cradle of "Kepler-11".

“The Falling Rocket” is the apotheosis of the present-day Mathieu, an exploit that, while perhaps to be expected from a musician of his talent, nonetheless surprises for the speed and low profile with which it reaches us. Within it we find, mixed and blended together, the evocative power of someone who has become one of the foremost figures in contemporary ambient, a range of atmospheres that is anything but predictable, a mix of styles grown ever more personal, and that technical perfection which has always been a hallmark of his work. One of the high points of his career.

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13/07/2013