SOUNDICIAN

Tranquilicity

Soundician (2003)

Sorry - no album cover at this time

review by Bill Binkelman

On their second release, the duo of Kitt and Odette Johnson (who record as Soundician) continue to show their affinity for crafting inviting, accessible songs that traverse the ambient, melodic EM, and new age genres with amazing ease. As was evidenced on their previous CD (The beauty is knowing...), these two display a knack for integrating melodic sensibility with more overt electronic music elements to yield short (the longest track here is four and a half minutes long) yet sweet selections that alternately twinkle, shine, float, bounce, and soar. To my ears, no one else is making music that exhibits the same kind of cross-genre hybridization with such a high a degree of quality and sincerity. Soundician are both unique and talented.

The album opens with the liveliest and cheeriest number, "Freefall." Immediately, characteristic Soundician elements surface: high quality electronic keyboards, catchy refrains, and a certain "sparkle" to the music itself. Kinetic rhythms, both synthetic and also ethnic (sampled water drums), pump out a snappy beat while a eight-note refrain repeats in the background. Other whirring spacy synths zoom here and there, along with isolated echoed synth notes. It all adds up to a fun cut. Another rhythm-infused song is next. "Cherryblossom" introduces a sound that will surface again on later tracks. It sounds like the happy-go-lucky song of a robin, albeit played out on an electronic keyboard, of course. It's extremely playful, and when wedded to a gentle but insistent midtempo rhythm (on snare, bass, and cymbal) along with soft synth chords and twinkling keyboards, the result is both fun and pretty.

That word, "pretty," while usually shunned by artists when describing their music (for some reason I'm still unclear of) is an apt description of Soundician's unique music - it's pretty. However, it's not the "pretty" of syrup and sugar. There's more substance here. However, there's no denying that songs like "Slow Motion Snow" (with koto-samples, shimmering keyboards, and waves of electronic undercurrents) are, well, pretty; or, if you prefer, even beautiful. The simplicity (it's well-engineered but not overly dense or ultra-complex in the mix) of Kitt and Odette's music cleverly hides their attention to detail and their devotion to fashioning tunes that convey a true visual sense. The appropriately-titled "Leviathan" has all manner of "underwater" elements and textures: sonar-like reverberations, wavering fluid-like tones, a slow but deliberate sense of undulation - and when you least expect it, forlorn guitar (or sampled guitar). "Glide" gently soars on soft airborne currents, as portrayed by layers of ethereal synths and Kevin Kendle-like keyboard notes. "Adrift" (one of the slightly dark tracks on the CD) contains elements of classic spacemusic (echoed synth piano, synth washes, plucked string keyboards) and easily conjures up a sensation of floating through either the Earth's atmosphere or the cosmic backwaters of the Milky Way.

While hard core ambient music fans might turn up their noses at the overt sampled-flute keyboard on "Kradle" or the obvious classically-influenced "Waltz No. 3" with its synth string section and harpsichord, those who enjoy both melody and electronics will find more than a few gems to ponder and examine on Tranquilicity. From the catchy rhythms of tracks like "Freefall," "Cherryblossom," and "Starfish," to the traditional ambient textures of "Adrift," "Leviathan," to the hybrid tracks like "Canopy," Soundician shows that The beauty is knowing... was not a fluke, but instead was a mere appetizer with many more sonic delights yet to come.