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CD Feature/ Nebulo: "Avutma"

  Tobias

Asides from the simple fact that they appear, fragile and self-possessed, solitary and rich, the musical themes of Avutma seem strange since they are displayed as a delicate ecosystem of manifold density. In presenting this ambiguous world of fiction and fragmentation, all held in check by a fine feel for rhythm and texture, Nebulo injects expression and vulnerability into the debris of modernism. 

Different tones, playing styles, and effects are chopped and channelled into dense repetitive layers that capture the imagination with consistency. A gentle interplay of accents, declarations, questions and answers follows, unfolding in a blithe manner, but with enough blurred details to keep the succession of events well beyond predictability.     

There is thus no apparent attempt to lead the music in one direction or another.Instead, he maintains a contradictory tension that indirectly fosters a constant becoming, rather than a simple chameleon changing of colors. "Lactoz Pill" ensphere's slender threads of sound with looping squiggles, spackled with beats of bracing grittiness. All of these antagonistic elements create a complex unity touched by calm gentility, subdued confusion, and indiscreet animosity. These units then splinter, shift about in a tactful bit of subterfuge, and finally rebuild themselves into significant variations on the same basic template. 

Ghostly networks are the stuff of "Stramir", evincing the potential power of the fragment to entice and swiftly enshroud the external environment in its fine latticework.Without steering the proceedings into glum sentimentality, organic instruments are made manifest in the odd place over the course of the albums duration. Most notably, "Limbes/Coton-Poudre" builds from a relatively stable sonic backdrop, broken by wet, whimpering cries of alien hatchlings. In due time, a ghostly warble cycle and a barrage of clicking digitalia expands the scope of the action, before the sharp silver hues of an organ sets the whole surface aglow. There is a childlike freshness in these rich and serious sonic excursions; Nebulo gracefully setting off in a variety of directions with little apparent concern for where he'll end up.

By Max Schaefer

Homepage: Nebulo
Homepage: Hymen Records