For any chords of comfort the listener will please visit the New Age album bin. Embracing the limiting and corrosive effects of our modern times and what it can do to the heart and the imagination, recording under the name Cosmic Ground Electronic Musician Dirk Jan Müller returns with Melt (66:04) – his six track high-tech trek back to the birth of thought by way of the furthest reaches of the aural universe. If not love-at-first-listen, then it certainly will at the very least yield a kind of Sci-Fi fascination. Stripped to its basics Melt is a brain stirring work imbued with the mysterious promise of possibility and rousing sense of freedom associated with the field of Spacemusic. Eerily expectant it feeds our uneasiness – as the layering of conscious and unconscious perspectives demands otherworldy leaps of imagination. Surrendering to the disquiet we enter a world of secrets. As ominous drones are let out beneath a series of modular mutations a narrative of being and becoming grows clearer. Sharing sparks in traikin sequencer spirals we are encouraged to dream freely among the motoring notes and machine pulse. At times the allusions coalesce into indecipherable murk, while elsewhere may be encountered a voluptuous richness of tone – just one example of the many psychologically resonant moments and gestures that endow this release with its outsized power. But this music has no mind of its own – which is where we come in. From dystopian minimalism to space force flight Müller has created a singular sonic realm, and put us at its center. However hesitantly, we move toward the fulfillment of his design. Subtly affecting in its conveyance of indefinite perceptions, Melt holds its own in a rare sound space for contemplation. Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 18 April 2024
