Memory Shell - AES Dana
Memory Shell - AES Dana
Album: Memory Shell
Artist: Aes Dana
Genre: Psychedelic Chillout / Ambient
Link: http://www.ultimae.com/en/releases/120/tracks.html
If you want to dream while awake, this is the album for you. Masterfully crafted, subtly layered, way ahead of its time in terms of production value, Memory Shell is a gliding craft easing slowly out into an interstellar abyss. It glides and coasts effortlessly into the depth of your inner space, creating the illusion of traveling into outer space. The feeling i always get when hearing this album from to start to finish in order, is that of journey into a place in my dormant mind that has never been visited. It meanders though a corner of my own consciousness that is as vast as a solar system, with dazzling sunlight, shadowy moons, and gleaming stars. It is through the determined etching of a narrative, using select melodies and vocals, deep baselines and subtle percussive elements, that this journey into interstellar morning light unfolds. Vincent Villuis manages to make the stars sparkle far away on the horizon and have the milky way whisper secrets to you about the universe if you care listen. There is much in the layering and an unending vast synth at the bottom of it all that bridges the tracks into one another so that the illusion never breaks. When tracks change it feels like your space craft is taking a subtle turn left or right as it moves towards another destination. There are moments of deep introspection. The journey has a sprinkling of thought provoking sounds, replete with cosmic laments rolling out in a deep space. An absolute delight of undulating atmospheres that sooth and catalyse dreams.
The album begins with a reversed piano led Chernozem, where it seems like you are tuning into the whispered voices of the cosmos through a radio transmitter.
Iris Rotation then kicks in with a heart beat and scattered percussion. Driving it is a beautiful melody that hauntingly hangs over the percussion like slow motion fractals of sliced light.
Dusts begins with bells that sparkle like an alien communication lost in the nether regions of endless space with a stutter edited vocal sample that calls out to you, inviting you into the infinite. The whole piece is peppered with scattered percussive rhythms that grow onto the backbone of a deep baseline, finally developing into a spiralling muted melody that pulls you into the final phase with a deep kick drum to complete the progression.
Opaline is one of my absolute favourites. It flows in with a pick up in tempo, a groovy running bass line and a thumping kick. The most in your face of the journey, it is perfectly placed in the album as an active acceleration in the dream flight. Your shuttle has kicked into over drive and is soaring over an asteroid belt and the view from the observation deck is simply stunning.
Memory Shell intros with voices moving with delays into a muted and well woven track driven by its ambient pads that undulate in waves, with a kick and baseline that continues like the one set up by the pervious track.
Once this rhythm takes a natural pause, it melts into Haze, an empty plaintive cry that uses beautiful female vocals, where the voices call to you like the lost souls of many cosmic travellers that are reaching out to you across time and space, inviting you to sail towards them. They are like melancholic mermaids in the moonlight.
The same wailing becomes more ominous, almost underwater-like in its quality in Shouting Valley.
Cities Update is unsettling, with an unconventional bass line, creating a more morbid space, more demanding, more unusual. There is a determined edge to its rhythm almost tribal and hypnotic. By this time in the journey, i can feel the solar sailer i am afloat on heading downward into a tailspin fall.
We break out of it into a state of limbo, with the introduction of a more tribal organic percussion, delayed tabla tones, dispersed voice like whisperings, and a hypnotic muted melodies in Sub Morphing. This track is dominated by the same delicious synth pad that comes and goes in waves, holding up the fabric of this album and its entire narrative.
Grounds Around is another story space that unfolds slowly, a moment in the journey where one sails past an alien ship so much bigger than our own, that it makes me aware of how small a speck we really are in the universe. Fortunately that ship sails by without showing any interest in us, but is an awe inspiring sight.
The Exposure remix is a track the re-enforces my belief that the sounds used to denote being underwater and being in deep deep space are the same. This track has a deep sea / space melody and haunting voices that leave me imaging legions of mermen in Atlantis as easily as me seeing dolphin like creatures building ancient cities in space.
Almost like a conclusion that brings full circle this journey, we return to Chernozem Closing, which is like the sounds of the ship returning back to its point of origin, tuning into the same transmission and in a an unending, timeless way, starting the journey again. This album is a must listen especially if you are Lost Somewhere Dreaming and want a narrative told to you, through superior musical sound design.
ABOUT MEMORY SHELL
Composed essentially by Vincent Villuis (co - H.U.V.A. Network) using digital and acoustic instruments, with the participation of Mahiane (aka Sunbeam) for composition, arrangements, voice and storytelling, Pascale Auffret, for her unique ethereal vocals, and mastered by sound engineer Huby Sea.
Memory Shell took a year in the making and was played along the way at festivals and parties across the world (Japan, USA tour, UK, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium.)
It has 12 tracks offering a panoramic vision of deep morning trance and ambient, wrapped in a 3 parts digipack including a 16 pages booklet of pictures and texts. A complete Deluxe edition to gently flow into a new season.
ABOUT AES DANA
AES DANA aka Vincent Villuis, composer and sound designer, Dj and co-owner of Ultimae records. Electronic activist since teenagehood, he was also one of the founding members of ASURA. Bass player and singer in several coldwave and industrial bands, he then moved on to composing with machines.
Specialised in sampling and layering of accoustic sounds digitally transmuted, Vincent Villuis creates a music which offers multiple listening possibilities.
AES DANA brings a fusion between the British Progressive feel and the traditional American Space Music; with sounds anchored in the psychedelic realm freely flowing into a morning downtempo trance, tribal or smashed rhythms.
So far he has produced 4 solo albums, participated to about 3 dozen compilations and collaborated on two albums with Swedish artist Magnus Birgersson under moniker H.UV.A.NETWORK. We expect his next album [ Perimeters ] to be released in 2010.
In 2009, Vincent Villuis composed soundtracks for Science Fiction movie "The Passport" (Amund Lie) and "Atrophy Bank" (Sam Asaert) which should come out late 2009. In June 2009 was released his latest album [ Leylines ] which received many excellent feedbacks from the electronic scene and from the beyond audience.
The album was ranked top 10 sales electronic music on Itunes USA and Top 5 on emusic.
