FRANZ KIRMANN - Meridians

Franz Kirmann is a name that has recently made the rounds on more than one occasion. Known until last year only to a small circle, and almost exclusively as one of the two bosses of Days Of Being Wild (on which he had also released two albums of decidedly limited impact, hiding behind a couple of disposable monikers), his career took a turn just over twelve months ago, when he started "interrupting" the piano of his friend Tom Hodge and caught the attention of none other than Denovali. And it's Denovali, as usual with its artists, that has decided to christen Kirmann's solo debut too (not counting the extremely limited CD-R "Random Access Memories"), an album that carves out its own identity within the synth-ambient current that seems to have long since conquered the upper echelons of the German label.

"Meridians" is first and foremost a complex work, whose gorgeous (as usual) artwork only hints at part of the clues needed to anticipate its inner workings. It's a sort of hypothetical retrospective that surveys the entire sonic spectrum Kirmann has moved through: something in which fans of the pair of albums released so far by Piano Interrupted can find themselves at home (the closing of "You Fall In Love With Someone Else" could easily pass for a raw outtake from that project), while at the same time letting its author retrace the evolution that led to that latest stage. So alongside tracks whose pianistic echoes connect directly to the present, there's room for a colorful arsenal of drone-gaze layering, shimmering synthetic surges, and instrumental constructions with an exquisite pop sensibility.

And looking closely, it's precisely this last element that stands as the crowning achievement of Kirmann the solo artist: where the most obvious limitation of the work with Hodge had been an excessive tendency toward academicism, here we're caught off guard by gems like "Glider" and "The Day We Threw The Keys Out The Window" — the former wrapped in reverb, the latter clean and crystalline, but both sharing an engaging compositional simplicity. One is reminded in turn of the limpid architectures of Steve Moore, the almost sci-fi surges of Outer Space, and, on the opposite end, the dub expanses of Ulrich Schnauss and the melodic soul of Tycho at his best. These scenarios also resurface in the opening red-carpet treatment for arpeggiators and electric piano on "Dancing On The Edge Of The Void" and in the Jarre-esque sequencer that emerges from the buzzing swarm of "Only When Your Eyes Are Closed".

On the whole, less surprising though equally evocative are the various constellations rendered with star-gaze technique: alongside a small marvel like "He Watched As She Disappeared Into The Crowd", almost post-rock in the way it grows by progressively piling on new layers of sound, there are episodes like the dark "Where Did We Go Wrong?", the pulsing "Good Morning Bright Star", the whispered "Ghost Of A Smile" and the thoroughly unsettled "With Such Sweet Despair", which rely mainly on a hefty dose of autopilot. The same "bug" also afflicts part of the lengthy "They Drove All Night Only To Find Themselves Back Where They Started", while in the astonishing "Excelsior" it's swept away by sharp, jagged outgrowths à la Jon Hopkins. The most unpredictable of the parting shots on an album that's fascinating in its deliberate fragmentation.

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01/09/2014