There are certain albums that swoon and sway the soul, which penetrate outward and inward, leading one to travel back and forth to time and place. Nicolas Picciotto's Beings From the Origins (recorded at the SwissVintageStudio and released through Submarine Broadcasting Company) is one such enlightening example.
Some of Picciotto's compositions are, in fact, historic for what they invoke, even when it's up to the listener to determine when and where they emanate.
The title track works wonders in this respect, invoking founders from vague, timeworn sectors, with an exotic, New Age beat that builds triumph through sterling invention and by default, possibly even battle.
"Ancient Traveller" is as riveting for its purpose and plan: smooth as silk across an infinite sky. Picciotto's Whovian vibrations also pump the heart with steadfast focus, and as torpefying as they are to the mind, "Ancient Traveller" struts with an enduring pop-muscularity that suggests pure, Herculean Top Ten.
"Thoth and the Emerald Tablets" is gentler in its epic construction, with a mystical verve that's at once ancient-alien and at another point, grassroots-terrestrial. Its hybrid construction feels like sand and brick, satisfaction filtered through sweat, stoking chords that soar from the past to influence eons to come.
"For You Jonas My Son" echoes the metaphoric tablets, launching antiquated ways to forge modern ones, in what emerges as a magnificent, two-tiered streak. However, the sumptuous "The Law of One" cements the "Jonas", patriarchal concept, blessing generation after generation with appetizing endowment.
Other offerings are more autonomous. "Love at First Sight" presents amorous, Blade Runner noir, insinuating one's first android fling. "Sunshine" plays with similar satisfaction, as warm and cozy as one's favorite blanket, but with enough popping force to burn the brain. And then there's "Underground Lofty" and "Stop the Rush", which represent interludes of pelvis-swiveling necessity: each devoid of remorse, signaling the existential importance of having lived, struggled and (if only along that rare, galactic plane) laughed.
My favorite of the album's compositions is the cosmic "Let There Be Light Again", for no other reason than the obdurate hope it strikes. As with "Underground Lofty" and "Stop the Rush", Picciotto probes ever farther beyond earthly restrictions with his disco-tripping creation, and in so doing reminds us of the immanent miracles that spring from all beginnings. The tune is astral but grounded, sanctimonious but welcoming, as it births an original and enriching world.
On the ambitious whole, Beings From the Origins is life-affirming: an opus not only ripe with dancing discovery but inexhaustible recovery. To (re)experience it is to come away forever and always changed.
https://submarinebroadcastingco.bandcamp.com/album/beings-from-the-origins
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