Sylvain Carel – Look Over The Nile (RSD25)

French composer Sylvain Carel started life digging on the classics like Dvorak and Holst, and then he logically developed into a Prog-head.  Thrilling to the expansive sounds of Van Der Graaf Generator and King Crimson, he would delve deeper into kosmische Krauters like Amon Düül and Tangerine Dream. His Strat-rocking 20s led him to studio work backing and writing for other performers and eventually, developing his own vision. With an early love of the ARP synthesizer, it was a natural move into soundtracks and evocative soundscapes. This would lead to a serious study of Musique Assistée par Ordinateur (Computer-Assisted Music), and Carel building his own studio to accommodate all his ideas. 

Carel also filled his head with the sounds of the globe, traveling to Africa, India, and the Middle East, and all these influences spilled out on his first solo LP released in1982, tellingly titled Look Over the Nile. Like most sought-after private presses, the album displays a deceptively simple cover, masking a rich, even mystical tapestry of sonics that transcend time, place or waves (new? olde? the seas?). Carel continues to create symphonic ambient works to this day but Look Over the Nile might be his finest daze.

LOUKSOHR is a nearly-misleading but brilliantly bloopy opener. It’s one unique slice of wedding-band techno-funk from the Star Wars Cantina Band. Boasting an insanely primitive drum machine stammer, unexpected dubby key vamps, YMO melodiousness,  and a constantly morphing sameness–it’s simply not like anything you’ve ever heard.

THE NEXT DUNE begins with ambient Cluster pulses and shimmers, but then gets down like an overzealous-Vangelis audition to join in supergroup Harmonia. The veritable suite then hikes into a full-on Dinger-ian Viva! (La France) anthem. The Stratosphear/Autobahn-like propulsion one/ones the listener into a metronomic trance, a spiraling dream of subtle phases and increasingly complex melody tones.

WATERS is dreamy newest age that comes on like ‘In the Air Tonight’ before being drowned in creamy/bloozy multi-tracked space guitar that’d make Davey Gilmour blush. The near classic rock fist-pumper then descends into a pure cosmic electronic K-hole.

SOFT SOFA RIVER displays a nearly Heldon-ish fried experimentation. The beatless number has it’s own dystopian, sequenced internal rhythm , before building into a buzzing (but purty) wall of synth.

COBRA conjures a rootsier La Dusseldorf, and yet evokes a cool early 80s tv show theme, especially once the warbly-but-wailing (and hammer-on-ing) guitars ooze in (think Knight Rider or Hunter? A Buck Rogers hedonistic space-dance number?). The epic also has a few nice ‘movements’ into blissed minimalism and full on geetar rok.

VISION OF THE END isn’t as bleak as it sounds, but more like some Cure-ish/Lynchian post-surf punk, with a sleazy drum machine on the ‘Latin rock’ setting. The over-chorused guitar falls somewhere between Steve Hillage and Andy Summers, and I’m not complaining!

IN THE CRISTAL is a short-but-sweet endcap, which evokes the great Gottsching playing guitar like it was a dulcimer. With kosmik Tomita-esque waves flowing in and out, it’s one glorious and fitting closer.

Tracklist
1. Louksor
2. The Next Dune
3. Waters
4. Soft Sofa River
5. Cobra
6. Vision Of The End
7. In The Cristal