cdRoots World Music Shop

Belgium's Aurélia take a musical voyage

Aurélia
Hypnogol, Journal d'un capitaine
Homerecords.be (www.homerecords.be)

Aurélia continue their unconventional journey in the musical seas with this concept album subtitled "journal of a captain." As they explain their concept, a captain who considers himself an outstanding singer organises a concert on his ship to show off his skills. It is an unconditional disaster. Distraught after his failure, he begins to navigate the canals and rivers alone, which leads to his hallucinating. The resulting mumblings are archived in his log.

Equally built on the pillars of humor, trance, jazz and at times eastern rhythms, Hypnogol is everything mainstream music is not in 2007. Taking cues from psychoanalysis (hypnogol is a play on hypnagogia, the term for the state where one is just before plunging into sleep and Gogol, the Russian writer), this is music of a complexity and depth not easily found. Hypnogol succeeds because it is fascinating and funny, but also challenging, a record that the listener might unlock only after repeated listening, much in the same way one understands auteur cinema.

Musically, the trio uses a diverse set of tools - violins, guitars, daf, tapan, vibraphone and gongs - to illustrate the captain's journey into the unknown. They sing in German, English and French to document the paranoid undertones of the captain's malfunctioning logic. Taking their vanguard ideals a step further, between November 2007 and May 2008, Aurélia will board a real barge, Aureliaferia, and give concerts on it in Belgium and France.

For anyone interested in challenging, entertaining concept albums, Hypnogol could be the record of the year. For the rest of us, this is a record that camouflages its complexity and challenges under a continental cosmopolitan spirit that describes uniquely the miracle of major blunders. If you think this is a subject that is out of step with our times, think of every misinformed Pop Idol contestant, every Britney comeback strategy, every high-spirited entrepreneur whose venture misfires spectacularly, every political undertaking that ends in misery. Hypnogol could work as the soundtrack for any flight of fancy that ends in tears and, hopefully, self-awareness; a true record for our times. - Nondas Kitsos

Listen

CD available from cdRoots

posted by cf @ 6:06 AM