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CANTUS UMBRARUM
by “Lightwave”
Horizon Music, 2000
http://www.hmnetwork.com

“Lightwave” is an electronic music group with a changing membership, mostly
French, and their music definitely has a Euro sound to it. This is not the
rock-driven electro-pop of the famous Germans of Tangerine Dream and their
ilk, but an earlier, much more mysterious sound which harkens back to the
earliest experiments, forty and fifty years ago, of electronic musicians in
France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Back then they made their way with
oscillators and filters and tape manipulation and, if they were lucky, Ondes
Martenot– yet “Lightwave” keeps the old heritage in these pieces in the
computer-dominated 21st century.
	The Cantus Umbrarum (it means “Song of Shadows” in Latin) album
arose from a musical and spoken word “installation” which was produced in a
series of caves in Vercors, France. Visitors would pass through the caves
while the music and text was playing. Naturally the music is designed to
evoke the subterranean world, and it does so beautifully with pure
electronic tones both beeping and sustained, synthesizer washes, processed
sound-effects and Rich-ian watery “glurp,” as well as material played on
acoustic instruments such as violin, Turkish clarinet, and bass clarinet.
The tuning is often microtonal or “whole-tone." At some points, “Lightwave’s”
music is almost exactly like some of the “atonal” music that dominated
“serious” concert halls for the decades between 1950 and 1980.
	One factor that may deter potential listeners to Cantus Umbrarum is
that the album includes the spoken texts which were used in the caves, and
much of this is in French, which not all listeners in the USA will know.
There are also some text passages in Italian and English, but  even if you
do know the other languages, you may not appreciate so much spoken word
material, which tends to get in the way of the music. Yet there are some
long and exceptionally beautiful “instrumental” passages between the texts
in this album, especially in cuts 3,8, 11, and 13. There are also two extra
pieces at the end without spoken word, one of which (“Erebus”, cut 14)
features an extremely weird wailing vocal track.
	I really liked this album, but I admit that it is not going to appeal to
many people, even “ambient” fans. Perhaps it might work better if
 “Lightwave” were to eliminate the spoken words and simply develop the
musical part as a “soundtrack album.” Even so, you’d be left with a very odd
production echoing the electronics of Europe through deep dark caves of
almost impenetrable esotericism.

HMGS rating: 8 out of 10

11/7/00




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