Shulman - Soundscapes And Modern Tales
Artist: Shulman
Title: Soundscapes And Modern Tales
Label: Shaffel
Date: 2002
Track listing:
01. 11'19" Small Grey Creatures
02. 03'00" New Paradigm
03. 10'48" First Came The Stars
04. 07'40" Take A Walk Outside
05. 10'09" Elements
06. 11'33" Avant Garden
07. 06'26" Fromage
08. 06'23" Shiogo
09. 04'01" Aion
Review:
Okay, this is my first "real" review ever so go easy on me.
T1. Small Grey Creatures. The track aka song starts out with some dude telling
stuff about UFOs that crashed in the northern Germany near the Baltic sea. The
commentary goes on for about 1 minute, after that some strings join the play.
After that some weird singing, that somehow reminds me from Waterjuice. The
song actually sounds quite promising, even little psychedelic. Hypnotic
pattern repeating, repeating, repeating, you get the point? At 03.30 I
suddenly notice that there's also a chilled beat on the "background" and
wonder when it came into the pattern. At five minutes there's a little
chilling part that lasts until 06.30, this is a great time to fill your lungs
with air, you might forget to do it later. Now on you have to concentrate on
the music, just close your eyes, don't think, just listen to the "flow". At
08.00 the strings are BACK. Suddenly the song ends =(.
T2. New Paradigm. IMHO this is an intro for the next song. It doesn't have any
beats, just some looooooooong waves and effects.
T3. First Came The Stars. Are they horns? Well anyways something like that
starts out this masterpiece, after that a nice Raja Ramish flute joins the
game. At 01.30 you might think that you are in India, although this only
happens if certain chemicals are involved. The beat has some Violet Visionish
influences, the Flute is still Rajaish. What a great mixture =). At 05.00
there's one of those brakes again just fot the purpose that Yaniv Shulman
brilliantly builds the song back to perfection. The beat, bassline, weird
stuff it just builds up brilliantly. We are starting to get some new
instruments.. at 08.00 it's still building, and then suddenly. Am I in
Shpongle Land? A nice solo joins the game and this is absolutely one of the
album's highlights for me. I could imagine myself as being somekind of "Shrek"
thing just chilling around Blobbish yellyish things, having the best time ever
eating candy =). It's hard to explain. =)
T4. Take A Walk Outside. Atfirst this song was a little bit hard for me to get
into and so I decided to Take A Walk Outside, while listening this track
through. I braved the forces of the nature and made a 10 minute walk in the
blizzard. This song sort of stands out from this album, it's somehow more
aggressive, more raw and predictable. The samples remind me of Violet Vision.
Actually this track reminds me from "VIolet Vision Style", you know, the drum
'n bassish feeling.. Well this is also one of the highlights for me.
T5. Elements. This song can also be found in the Hommega - Life Is compilation
and I had already heard it like 100 times. I was hoping that this would be
like a remix or something, but it wasn't. It's the exact same track, well
maybe the end is a little different so that it mixes better with T6. A lot of
people might think this as the best track of the album. It's tribal, hypnotic,
really nice but I have just heard it way too many times.
T6. Avant Garden. This is not really an ambient song. It's an ambient track,
cause it has some BPMs. It also has some sort of Opera singing that blends
really well with the other "instruments". The build up process can also be
found in this track. This time the beats are Simon Posfordish. The BPMs sort
of sneak up and suddenly they just are there. I'm starting to repeat myself,
but this is a highlight again =).
T7. Fromage. I don't know what fromage means, in the case that it actually
means something of course. The song starts with some synths and wind. The beat
and the bass arrive on 00.30. Then the weirdo singing stuff. A small break,
more complicated beat, and the songs goes on. The Raja flute is BACK =), and
no It went away =(. At 03.20 the evil BPMs enter (Go Away U SOB). No good
without evil, no evil without good: the flute is BACK =). Suddenly it's all
over.
T8. Shiogo. Some will love it, some will hate it. This is one of those
Interchill style songs. No beats, nothing radical, just a flow. I'm not a
great fan of this sort of music, but this is okay though. Perhaps this is the
Soundscape of this album.
T9. Aion. aka "sort of outro" ("aion = i will" in finnish). I don't really know
what this is. Perhaps Shulman took all the remaining things and arrenged them
together. This could be a great song, too bad it only lasts 4 minutes.
BOTTOM LINE:
Psyshop called this album the "Israeli answer to Shpongle".
And a lot of you people probably want to know if this is "better" than
Shpongle. Well, it's not better, but it's not worse either."
I'm glad I got it.