OOPHOI "Wurm Series I" Glacial Movements - reviews -

[GLACIAL MOVEMENTS]

By WITHELINE

http://whiteline1. wordpress. com/2008/03/30/oophoi-an-aerial-view-cd-glacial-movements/

Oophoi - An Aerial View - CD- Glacial Movements
www. glacialmovments. com Poised as it is, as the first official release in Glacial Movements' "WURM" series, Oophoi offer up a glistening, expansive ambient workout, not unlike several of the multitude of ambient artists operating at the turn of the noughties. Oophoi summarise their work as an "airy drone with minimal variations", actively attempting to side step some of the pitfalls and cliches attached to any sonic interpretation of cold and icy landscapes, and in doing so, manage to summon up some of the energy reminiscent of the early era of ambient music.

The WURM series was offered up to artists to create uninterrupted, long- form pieces of atmospherics relating to the WURM period of glaciation, giving each artist an opportunity for truly immersive and engaging work, intended to "..describe the endless ice age, its eternal ice, the blinding white light, the abyssal silence, a music that will transport the listener to peaceful, unexplored lands..". Thus reads the GM press release for the series, and this first release does the job admirably. An Aerial View could easily eclipse Eno's "Apollo" series in its prescriptive and slowly unfolding sensibility, it washes and waves, its serenity and gentility only minutely disturbed by luminous tones from theremin and synthesisers, actively drawing the listener into a world and an age beyond present day comprehension. Best listend to in a calm and undisturbed room, devoid of any distractions, An Aerial View is best appreciated in one sitting. Original and ground breaking it is not..but if you are in need of aural sedative, or sonic balm, this is truly the album for you. Highly recommended.

BGN

[GLACIAL MOVEMENTS]

by GOTHRONIC

http://www. gothtronic. com/?page=23&reviews=4752

Six releases until the year 2000, one release in the year the world could have ended and as the world didn't end, Gianluigi Gasparetti dedicated himself to making ambient and released seventy-four titels since. Alone under the name Oophoi or in collaboration with many artists of which Klaus Wiese is just one of them.

Admitted, his works are mostly unknown to me except for a sampler contribution here and there, so "An aerial view" is a nice place to start exploring his mind. And his mind is one that perfectly fits in the scene of Italian ambient artists. Nice long-stretched pads and strings under a bouquet of miniature pre-recorded sounds and modulations.

The subtitle of this album is "for theremin and synths" which seems to be referring to the source of these recordings. The fact that synths are being used is quite obvious in the aural spectrum, but even after several listenings I can't find the theremin-sound.
Not that it devaluates the music, hell no!

The soundscape being presented is just what a soundscape should be - nice, filling the empty spaces, giving you enough perspective to follow it on both high volume as well as background-volume. And as stated before: True Italian ambience, so if Hic Sunt Leones and Amplexus releases are your 'thing', do not hesitate to dive into the ice-cold world that is Wurm.

The Wurm-series is a new sub-division of Glacial Movements, but I must admit that I miss the deeper contemplation of creating a sub-label at this moment in time. Both divisions focus on ambient in a cold environment and this is only the fourth release from Glacial Movements. The future might explain it, we just have to wait on yet another nice release from Italy.

Band: Oophoi(int)
Label: Glacial Movements
Genre: ambient (ambient / soundscapes / ritual / drones)
Type: cd
Grade: 7.4
Review by: Bauke

[GLACIAL MOVEMENTS]

a new one by BRAINWASHED

http://brainwashed.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6766&Itemid=1

Oophoi, "An Aerial View"     
Written by Simon Marshall-Jones     
Sunday, 30 March 2008 


Italy's Alessandro Tedeschi (the man behind both the ambient Netherworld outfit and Glacial Movements) seems to be waging a one-man campaign through his label to make us aware of the fragility of the icy snowbound environments situated at both poles of our planet. This release, by fellow Italian ambient artist Oöphoi (Gianluigi Gasparetti), is the label's fourth foray and steadfastly continues the tradition set by the previous three in bringing  extended and hauntingly crystalline sound explorations of these threatened environments.


Glacial Movements

Oöphoi here regales us with a delicately sparkling, shimmering meditation on that very fragile nature of the pristine ice-sheets floating on the waters of the northern and southern extremities of this globe—an endangered fragility made even more topical with the news that large cracks are appearing in the massive Wilkins ice-shelf in Antarctica and that glacier-loss is accelerating. Oöphoi brings this matter to our attention through the medium of just over 65 minutes of minimalist drone, composed of slowly evolving and minutely changing synth washes providing a dreamlike backdrop for the ghostly voice of a solitary theremin, perhaps lamenting and bewailing the complacency and the careless attitude with which the human species disregards the health of his only home. The net result being a long slowly-unwinding Eno-esque ambientscape, describing a world where mankind has very rarely set foot simply because of an accident of geography and climatology, a place of endless stretches of white populated only by polar creatures supremely adapted to these harsh conditions, yet still, paradoxically, a place where the reach of man's shortsightedness has had, and continues to have, a profoundly damaging effect.

What I took from this was the shiveringly haunting beauty gracing one of the last true wildernesses left on this much-traversed and explored world of ours, a beauty bathed for at least half the year in utter darkness, the skies only occasionally enlivened by the playful auroral visitations splashing themselves across the vast expanse of midnight blue, the stars peeking out from behind the shimmering veil of electrons like some shy maiden. Oophoi's soundscapes capture that essential crispness of the polar air, where everything takes on a clarity unavailable elsewhere, where the light from billions of tiny pinpoints of light reach us and put on a gloriously unashamed display, perhaps because of the very fact that there are very few witnesses around. The whole sound, just like the land itself, welcomes the listener wholeheartedly with a coldly soporific and torpid embrace, enveloping one with a desire to do nothing but lie back and let the imagined warmth overwhelm, until life itself becomes a dream slipping through numb fingers.

This harks back to the early experiments in ambient soundscapes, gently wafting, swirling and mesmerising, unhurried, just like the slow progress of the glaciers and floes of ice flowing on the frigid seas of these ice-bound regions. Deeply spiritual in many ways and deeply moving, unfolding with a stately pace befitting the rhythm of life in these stark deserts of ice and snow, this album was, for me, redolent of both crisply cold but sun-lit winter mornings, or that part of the day when the blue skies of the day have given way to the deep purples and blues of twilight, the time when the stars emerge from the wings in order to put on their nightly show. This is shatteringly beautiful, scintillatingly frozen, and stunningly magnificent ambience.

[GordonDanis]

It's quite easy to think of this music as an island onto itself, but several days after a sheath of ice in the North Pole broke away from a larger piece becaue of global warming, the break-away piece being 7 times the size of Manhattan, it would be impossibly foolish not to acknowledge the ecological concerns behind the music. 

Kudos to Allessandro Tedeschi ("Netherworld,") not only for his efforts to bring the issue of global warming to the fore, but for involving other musicians who have conctributed to his "V/A" projects.  One more thing: he does some very nice playing on perhaps Oophoi's best CD to date, Arpa di Sabbia.

[Joe R]

Boy, is this ever a nice CD! Relatively simple and straightforward, by Oophoi's standards. Sad, solitary & beautiful.

[Undershadow]

Joe

I'm listening now, and it's quite a surprise. Though there's the customary cavernous background with the sound of huge lungs exhaling and that sort of amniotic womb-feel, there's quite a lot of 'lead' type material in here on an oboe-like keyboard that would have to be called 'melody'. But I'm not sure I'm that comfy with the timbre of the lead instrument, which reminds me a little of this: :o   

[Joe R]

Hey Alan-

It IS a little shrill at times (especially with headphones), but I love that pristine and fragile little melody.

I listened to it twice today, with my head buzzing from a sinus infection, fever, antibiotics, Sudafed, and several cups of strong coffee. I'm pretty sure I saw God. :)

[Campus Stellae]

...maybe a side effects of Sudafed...?

[Hallu]

I've just reviewed in on my french webzine :
http://www.brokendolls.org/?module=chronique&id=393
Without a doubt one of the best Oophoi's albums.

[APK]