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Category: Music
ROMAN(US) ~ "THE SECRET LIFE OF TREES"
A SENSUAL CYBERNETIC FOREST
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
From "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace" by Richard Brautigan
There is a garden at the Getty near where I live created by the installation artist Robert Irwin known for his luminous installation art. He was an odd choice. Irwin liked the look of man made, so chose rebar for the mushroom shaped rose enclosures. All the rocks in the little creak he created are cut rectangles, and the shrubbery forms a Labyrinth. There is an analog for natural beauty in this artificial space, and the plants seem to appreciate their manhandled museum setting. After years of planting things that wouldn't grow, which frustrated the one gardener I could get to talk about it, Irwin managed to find plants that wouldn't die on that hill. When I listen to Roman(us) on "The Secret Life of Trees" undisguised electronica. I am in that garden somehow. There are keys attached to transistors, sequencers and the light of electrons flowing through wires without much of anything that came from a seed anywhere on this CD beyond the reed in a metal saxophone. And yet I feel the electronic leaves falling across my face, hear the moist drip of cybernetic dew. In this constructed forest, the trees have been watching us ring after ring after ring.
There is a tension in the Roman(us) mix of nature, passion, artifice and awe that allows the listener pick a new path to explore from spin to spin. There is ambience with a pulse through love songs sung in an unnatural forest that is less a place that a context. This plugged-in dreamscape invokes reverie without going dreamy. It is a sensual environment, perhaps built on the natural math of the Fibonacci numbers, peopled with lovers, trucks, and trees. There is flesh and blood, fiber, chlorophyll in the thick of circuitry and imagination. There's a contemplative distance from the day to day that gives deeper meaning to the longing for human contact. Comparisons fail here where David Sylvian might be at home, among a fair crowd of dissimilar voices including Tim Buckley, Deep Forest, Secret Stealth, Brian Eno, Enigma, Gato Barbrieri and a towering pine.
Felix Roman Duque and José Roman Duque were once cousins in a high school rock 'n' roll band in Venezuela. That didn't last. Felix moved to Barcelona, and Jose went off to study at Berklee School of Music and resettled to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. José took to the keyboard with Latin jazz. Felix took the nickname "El Gato" as a Spanish language rock singer, and became the producer of videos. Their collaboration was thus accomplished through electronic means across that distance meeting through cyberspace. The kindred sounds and disparate influences on this album keep the listener listening with unlikely layers coming together into some new thing. This album is too damn interesting to fit into the ambient record bin. The trance of this music might set the spirit dancing.
THE SONGS:
1 PROMISES begins with something like a Fender Rhodes simple descending figure like Autumn leaves rocking through the air one after another. The air is filled with the grit of electro buzz white noise, and the ground quakes with the thump of machine drums and amplified bass. Felix sings in a high, clear, passionate voice of "walking and running," skin and promises.
2 LANDSCAPES IN A TRUCK has a deep pulse that can test the best of woofers, but there is a wafting piano reminiscent of Morton Feldman a little out of time, and the dripping of electronic water from a computer pipeline. An electronic orchestral haunts the song. The "road to a view" includes fireflies and tears. And the distant drip of electronic dew ticks down the circuit boards.
3 THE SECRET LIVES OF TREES comes from the pulse of an industrial landscape. Synth tremolo and nothing natural support the meditation on the observations of the eternal woods. There is a creative distance between the circuitry of the music and the sensuality of the song. That distance is inspired.
4 I'M TRAVELING (ANDREA'S LULLABY) is the most lyrical and Brian Eno ambient of the tunes so far. Felix is "traveling with your voice."
5 STANDING IN THE RAIN marks the return of danceable rhythm in this song sung in the rain. The uncertainty of love feels like standing silent in the rain.
6 SILENT WAYS, SILENT CRIES has a bell of a guitar hook ringing out the longing in the lyric. There is a sense of sorrow in the atmospherics and the electronic French Horn.
7 DRESSING LIKE A GOD has a deep tone and Elephant slow beat supported by a double reed setting on the keys. A "wrapped in cellophane" lyric supports a little complaint in the "power of love." The sliver of wood in a saxophone squeals out the pain and irony in this song played
8 SOMOS EL AIRE, SOMOS EL VIENTO has a choral opening augmented by twitters and sparkles from the machine. Felix's powerful tenor hits the high notes strong in this one, in ascending phrases.
9 PORTSMOUTH-BARCELONA has a touch of danceable samba nova feel with a chorus in vocalize and the sax stating its terms of engagement. The tech elements here are subdued.
10 28 DAYS is the cycle of the moon. Bells express charm and the rhythm section takes the day. If this is ambient, I'm Joseph Campbell. A unison horn section provides a sense of urgency. The gate will close in 28 days.
11 WE'RE ALL NEW takes a turn for the dream style electronic gamelan as the cello provides warmth. A prayer or a plea in Felix's voice and lyric is sung in a legato of soulful desire. Bells and buzzes out of time and with untuneable overtones occur in a pulse of their own. This sound poem finds its beauty in a timeless moment.
12 PROMENADE 5 hoists a touch of Gasparian-like duk duk wooden flute above a pounding sea of electro percussion and phase shifted keyboard clouds for an satisfying instrumental.
13 LANDSCAPES IN A TRUCK (INSTRUMENTAL) is the second track left only to its sweet juxtaposition if electronic decay and keyboard symphony. At the end of the journey it stands as a memory of the journey, and a kind of benediction.
ROMAN(US)
FELIX ROMAN =Voice, keyboards, Programming
JOSE ROMAN =Voices, Keyboard, Programming, Drums
9:57 PM
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