That’s how it is. Music that dwells between all horizons is hard to grasp. Listening in briefly is not an option here – lingering is the magic word, all stranger things considered. At the end of this journey, a certain Loplop is wandering around in the forest. Do you know Loplop? I didn’t know the journeyman until now. Nor those paintings by Max Ernst in which he captured dark forests on canvas that human beings should better not visit. Only the magical bird Loplop succeeds in these forays.
The prelude to these ten excursions into rare, real, surreal terrain is entitled „This Town Will Burn Before Dawn“. When the piece first took shape, the composer, whose instruments are listed as „electronics & sampling“, had in mind a pulsating, shining city full of inventions that is burnt down by barbarians, but without destroying the last traces of hope.
From track to track, the scenery is changing. Years ago, an asteroid approached Earth, stopped just before entering our orbit, and sped off in the opposite direction. Even scientists couldn’t come up with a completely plausible explanation, and the internet was flooded with theories that, of course, included extraterrestrial life. „Oumuamua, Space Wanderings“ is the apt name of the composition of a wonderfully strange album that apparently sets itself no limits thematically.
We travel in 80 worlds around the day anyway (some just don’t realise it). One thing at least seems to permeate all these ascetically conceived pieces: a sense of transformation, of traces of light in the darkest zones. Such things can easily go wrong, with minor-key textures, soaring pathos, plainly knit „new age“ props, and strained big-art bric-a-brac.
Evgueni Galperine doesn’t fall into any of these traps on „Theory Of Becoming“, an album that, despite its continuously surprising contrasts, gives space and depth to every single moment. Quiet seductively, the pieces (apparitions) let fall one mask after the other – sometimes we hear the dancing swing of a children’s song, sometimes a barely disguised earworm, a lost score of late romanticism, a Jules Verne-tested space travel or a chronicler of real horror.
„Theory of Becoming“ is completely cliché-free meditation music. And exciting to boot. It could become a new favourite album for listeners who appreciate the collected areas and immersions of Steve Tibbetts‘ „Life Of“ or Arvo Pärt’s „Tabula Rasa“, or the solo album by Mark Hollis, probably also for those who like to return to one or the other classic from the treasure troves of „Made To Measure“ and „Obscure Records“, historic labels and playgrounds for the undefined (founded once upon a time, deep in the last century, by Marc Hollander and Brian Eno).
And anyway, this terrific album bears the signature „produced by Manfred Eicher“. As a somewhat quieter presence, the strange bird Loplop was certainly also present in the Paris studios. And he knows the fast ways out of the protective zones of sheltered high culture and into the beating heart of our wilderness!