Ataraxia - Mon Seul Désir flac mp3 download

These days an album of traditional vinyl length (around 50 minutes - if you were lucky) leaves you feeling a tad short-changed. However, ATARAXIA can pack more emotion into five minutes than most people can spread across an entire triple album box set. So within just under three quarters of an hour they manage to charm you with the beauty of their timeless music; awaken a sense of Hollywood drama in the Eastern flavour of one track; and weave magical soundshapes like Spirits communicating from an idealised Mediaeval past. You find that their music soon reveals it's strengths when, after only the third or fourth play, the tunes seem so familiar that you may have known them your entire life. "Alsicon" nods towards their own past with it's delicate, bone-china-thin emotive feeling, as if FRANCESCA were reliving some childhood moments triggered by the sun playing on her face, or perhaps the olfactory stimili from somewhere familiar yet seldom visited. They somehow make a fairly flat ambience seem grandiose, with waves of guitar, keyboards and the rich, Operatic voice rising and crashing like gentle but forceful waves on the steady shore of percussion. "Jarem Gitti" sounds very similar to "Yulunga" by DEAD CAN DANCE - the atmosphere an immeasurable albedo-glimmer brighter. You kind of expect the desert wildlife sounds to appear (and indeed a shrill ululation from that voice chills the air as if malign spirit had passed over, briefly. There's an element of madness to "Eaudelamer" - moments where the Voice is almost speaking in tongues (and said tongue has swollen and numbed to a point where language is left behind). Having said which, this is perhaps the most distinct and 'instant' piece here. It weaves charming drapes of almost Ambient sound around the room, juxtaposed to an almost childishly PEEL-appealing Girlie vocal motif. The guitar-only track - "Sendero En Lago Verde" - a charming lullaby - is altogether more beautiful than anything has any right to be, comparable in emotional stakes only with witnessing a birth, that sudden dawning of a young life which in some small way changes the world far more than most Politicians empty policies could ever do. If you have ever been moved to tears by such a moment, then VANDELLI's deft brush strokes across taut strings may have captured that feeling forever here. "A L'Aube" sounds as if it may have been recorded for the fourth long-awaited (and probably never to happen) THIS MORTAL COIL album - a pocket of misty emotion which suggests longing, loss, a beautiful emptiness. Small and insignificant as any one of us, passing briefly through this world, yet as full of complex feelings as Human experience itself. They kick up a lot of dust when portraying a Mediaeval pomp with the closing song. Big, bold, forceful, they manage to weave their emotive signature into the precipitous angles of Traditional structures. And just when you thought the concept of 'hidden' tracks had come and gone, ATARAXIA go and hide an electronically-excited version of "Jarem Gitti" away at the end, all razor-wire flanges which cut through the air in slender sizzles. It occurred to me that I have known their music for as long as I have been writing - a snatch of one of their earlier tapes appeared on a sort of 'Scratch And Hear' tape I gave with the second issue of SOFT WATCH. I raved about them back then and cannot think of a reason why I shouldn't wave their banner now. ATARAXIA are something very, very special in a world where few things last and even fewer are worth the time you'd spend on them. Originally reviewed for Metamorphic Journeyman