Read more
Contemporary space music can take many forms, trading in the clichés of all things TD and Schulzian, working out its collective Namlook/Eno mojo, or using newly-forged star maps to chart ever more elusive terrain. Dodovski has done some stellar music for the Databloem imprint, and here he reveals his enigmatic ambient muse with relish. “I” not only makes imaginative use of synthetic chimes and atmospheric, reverbed bells, it does so while working a mantra-like motif that gradually builds in intensity until the center cannot hold and envelopes the listener under its monstrous, gravitational weight. The third chapter dispenses with the ring und drang to usher in a quaking melancholy of epochal drift that falls between the cracks of what sounds like mutated guitars announcing their presence. Throughout the finale, “Silent Moon”, we become unmoored and simply give in to Dodovksi’s vast, interplanetary vernacular, all awash in ginger, hushed tones that melt the skies above across a series of wafting, gelatinous gestures. Far too active for mere ‘ambient’ music, and well too contoured to be ignored as mere background noise, Derive is one of the finer slices of non-static electronica to cross our glidepath in many a (non)silent moon.
Dimitar Dodovski