In The Nursery

In the overcrowded garden of "synthetic" music of the second half of the Eighties, In The Nursery represented a genuine miracle, both for the conceptual audacity of their vision and for the extraordinarily high quality they achieved using the very same tools employed by the most commercial pop acts of the era. But while the tools were the same as those used by the bands vying for the synth-pop crown with ever more glossy and hollow singles, the same cannot be said of their inspirations: In The Nursery looked instead to the past, to "other" Eighties, namely the decadent symphonism of the late nineteenth century, without ever underrating the huge lesson of cosmic music, and even more so the ethereal mysticism of Popol Vuh.

By the time "Köda" was released, In The Nursery (i.e. twins Nigel and Klive Humberstone, backed by percussionist Q. and singer Dolores C.) already had several EPs to their name, along with one album ("Twins", a work that was perhaps still uncertain, geared towards an aggressive and oppressive brand of electronic music) and a soundtrack ("Stormhorse") that had better defined their artistic coordinates. And it is by continuing in that direction, refining that experiment, that the two brothers arrived at their masterpiece: a breathtaking work (and not merely in a figurative sense, given that the dominant trait of their music has always leaned towards turmoil and frenzy) that immediately perfects their highly distinctive idea of an "electronic orchestra": the sound of In The Nursery is, in every respect, that of a symphony orchestra, with arrangements that are always extremely rich, almost excessive, steeped in an exasperated "heroic" emphasis. And yet every orchestral sound (especially the hammering, often dissonant string sections) is achieved through electronics: ultimately, it's romantic synth-pop (let's never forget the existence of Ultravox) pushed to its most extreme consequences.

An almost entirely instrumental work, "Köda" is the artistic summation of In The Nursery's first period, the most "impetuous" one, but it's also a preview of what was to come, namely their gradual move towards a sort of "transglobal" new age that would nevertheless never lose sight of the fundamental idea of the electronic-orchestral symphony.

Opening the dance are the peremptory staccato sounds (another of their trademarks, perhaps indeed the most important one) of "Rites" (synthesized strings, drums and vocal declamations): but In The Nursery's music never lingers on a single theme, and so everything soon morphs into a relentless bolero, still steeped in an apocalyptic sound (with all due differences, but how close the sonic catastrophes of Foetus are to the Humberstones' early period...). The album essentially unfolds as one long suite, with numerous interludes: the first, the most sinister and dissonant, is "Maidens", caught between otherworldly noises and screeching strings. A fitting introduction to their "Te Deum", the album's first masterpiece: a perfect blend of gothic (the organ theme laid in the background, yet always looming) and romantic (the gorgeous symphony in the foreground, flowing smoothly from a taut string theme – in the style of Michael Nyman's minimalism – into a pastoral section dominated by flute).

Another interlude is "Triumph", but this time it's a celestial ambient interval, a prelude to the splendid piece "Burnished Days", with which the Humberstones stage a spectacular adagio for "pizzicato" violins (though always strictly "synthetic" ones) and layers of electronics that advance in cyclical, fluid waves: a mystical, serene harmony that the military drums keep trying to shatter, just before Dolores C.'s voice intones its hypnotic "récit". And then, with "Ascent", we reach the beating heart of the album and of In The Nursery's aesthetic: this is the record's pivotal theme, seven minutes of pure daydreaming, marked with sweetness and melancholy by the music-box chime of the keyboards and crossed by countless electro-symphonic acrobatics perfectly interlocked with their usual minimalist architectures: it's music of extreme solemnity, one that showcases an extraordinary skill in juggling immensely intricate electronic arrangements.

From "Ascent" we then flow seamlessly into the album's other long track, "Scherzo": the mood grows gradually more spectral and claustrophobic, but the Humberstone brothers are as ever extremely skilled at avoiding getting bogged down in cliché, whether that of gothic music, new age or synth-pop: the frenetic march pounded out by the drums, adequately supported by the surges of "electronic" strings and Dolores C.'s vocal warble, which almost timidly cuts across the track's colossal scaffolding, place the In The Nursery "Scherzo" in a dimension halfway between fear and dream. After "Guarded Rites", which revisits the album's opening theme, this time with explicit nods to medieval and chivalric imagery, it's the turn of "Suspire", another short piece that this time strays into exotic territory, a soft new age sonata, a dreamlike melody as simple and fragile as it is touching. Then along comes "Kotow", and with it, by extension, the kind of music that a few years later the shrewd and skillful Michael Cretu (aka Enigma) would make palatable to the mainstream with a few house touches. The idea is just one, and a very simple one: an "Andean" flute laid over a delicate ambient-new age carpet: the whole thing lasts barely the length of a breath, and yet it's one of the boldest episodes in the Humberstones' sonic imagination. The flute keeps sounding in the distance before being submerged beneath the majestic spirals of the extraordinary ambient symphony "The 17th Parallel", a kind of unthinkable missing link between Verdi and Brian Eno.

At this point you'd think perfect inner peace had been achieved, but then, like a bolt from the blue, along comes "Compulsion": the rhythms turn frantic again as never before, the keyboard surges grow massively heavy, drums and voices mark out a breathless race between epic and mournful atmospheres. This brings us to the grand finale of "Libertaire": once again it's the organ that lays the rock-solid foundations on which yet another imposing sonic edifice is raised by the twins' synths, but everything then dissolves into a new ambient stillness, this time crossed by fleeting piano chimes, before rising once more in a climb of "glorious" tones, closing the record on ascetic, abstract notes. The Humberstones' music is one that leaves you literally open-mouthed, exploring every possibility offered by electronic machines to arrive at a sound that holds together the strictest classicism and the most cutting-edge technology, and that avoids the risk of getting lost in needless pomposity thanks to a constant dialogue between the overwrought overtones of symphonic arias and the most nervous, agitated minimalism.

Of all this, "Köda" is without doubt the most successful and balanced testament: a work that, behind its boundless ambition, complexity and refinement, proves incredibly easy to listen to, and which, no small feat, contains a wealth of ideas that other acclaimed champions of "gothic" and symphonic electronic music would later draw on heavily (chief among them the German outfit Aurora, but partly also the American masters Black Tape For A Blue Girl and Lycia).

"Köda" is the "passage through time" theorized by Dead Can Dance, a bridge stretched between two worlds, it's Wagnerian romanticism reincarnated in the modernist utopia of the two English brothers, obviously destined — in the years when the term "new romantic" was associated with the likes of Spandau Ballet — to be relegated to a niche, from which the Humberstones would nonetheless carry on undaunted with their musical discourse, free to head toward ever more cultured and demanding solutions.

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30/10/2006