Synth&Sequences reviews 'Remembering Chestnuts, Icy Cold, and Bells''

Sylvain Lupari, Synth&Sequences, October 4, 2011:


As much strange as charming, Remembering Chestnuts, Icy Cold, and Bells from Sensitive Chaos is a hallucinating journey into the wonderful and musical world of glockenspiels. A journey which goes straight in the heart of our childhood memories, during Christmas Eves and Holidays family reunions, and which enchants with its wintry tones. It’s an ode to winter, to its ice-cold pleasures and its nostalgic souvenirs that Jim Combs's last opus wakes. Through its carillons and its ringings as joyful as melancholic, Remembering Chestnuts, Icy Cold, and Bells wraps with a veil of prisms forgotten souvenirs of our early childhood. Built on a big variety of bells which ring and resound on rhythms and atmospheres to the antipodes of their essences, Remembering Chestnuts, Icy Cold, and Bells is a brilliant opus to the measure of the ingenuity of this musician without borders, nor labels.


The title track is glittering of luminosity. On a delicate synth line which hides discreet choirs "Remembering Chestnuts, Icy Cold, and Bells" wakes up with soft ringings of carillons which radiate on a delicate hypnotic rhythm. On a rhythm moulded by fine percussions, the crystalline arpeggios swirl in a wintry breeze to form a strange iridescent ballet where bells ring and flutter among curt chords of a cackling synth and a suave ethereal choir.


"Ceiliúradh Mhór" is a wonderful ballad of glass which spins among a union of percussions and keyboard keys to forge a very beautiful and catchy childish melody. The synth blows a beautiful bewitching tune to this splendid carousel to jingles of prisms which is cute and delicate as everything!


"Winter Winds across the Heartland" is a good ambient track where layers of a shrill synth interlace in a stunning sensibility. A nice cheerful track, "Spirit of the Season" offers a more punctuated rhythm.The percussions hammer a muffled but lively rhythm, while the carillons swirl all around this rhythmic structure which inevitably makes stomped.


Dancing on a discreet line with a tone of organ and percussions a bit like the Amerindian tribal kind, "Carillon et Champagne" soaks in a mixture of nostalgia and melancholy. On a slightly circular rhythm, the carillons draw an astonishing melody with glockenspiels’ strikings which twirl vaporously while following an ascending curve as in a mesmerizing ballet danced in weightlessness. Hypnotic, because of the color and tone of glockenspiels, "Carillon et Champagne" turns and turns in a stunning musical dizziness where tones of prism shape an odd melody.


Delicate keyboard keys skip on a synth line at the opening of "Remembering Chestnuts, Icy Cold, and Bells (Prologue)". These furtive keys are effacing in the ascension of a synth line which makes tip over the track in an ethereal ambiance, surrounded by other powerful synth lines. An ambient track with filiform synth lines which sway in fine oscillations, "Remembering Chestnuts, Icy Cold, and Bells (Prologue)" is the only title of this last opus of Sensitive Chaos at not to use carillons.


After a reprise of the opening track, where carillons ring with more velocity, Remembering Chestnuts, Icy Cold, and Bells ends with a track as cheerful as "Spirit of the Season".


Initially on the first album of Sensitive plant Chaos; Leak released in 2006, "Nightshift at the Baby Mecha Nursery (Remastered)" is a lively track, livened up by nice arpeggios which spin on a rhythmic structure supported by sober percussions.


On a structure always so crystal clear as we find everywhere on this Jim Combs's last opus, the rhythm is encircled by delicate shimmering arpeggios which turn in a minimalist way, increasing even more the glockenspiels which float of a beautiful circular movement on a tempo to youthful intonations, describing rather well the Holidays’ ambiance and the nostalgia circulating around Remembering Chestnuts, Icy Cold, and Bells.