The album “Moribund Neighborhoods” found its way on the latest magazine issue on TURBULENCES VIDÉO.
Read the review here: https://videoformes.com/magazine/
English translation:
Amplidyne Effect is the name of the project initiated in 2009 by Macedonian audio and multimedia artist Martin Georgievski. Result of a commission within the framework of the No Lockdown Art initiative launched by the European Pepinieres of Creation and Transcultures (Belgium) to support contemporary creation during this period of forced isolation, “Moribund Neighborhoods” is a collection of sound pieces recorded at the artist in the city of Skopje or at his places of wandering during confinement.
This new album (Amplidyne Effect has produced nearly twenty releases to date, mostly but has been more present lately on the web than on disc) ambient electro exposes us to 9 sometimes tormented soundscapes (On The News), sometimes almost idyllic (Lucent), which make us put into perspective our own physical but also emotional confinement following the upheavals of Covid-19.
These introspective, almost meditative pieces plunge us into a dilated space/time with here and there also fragments of everyday sounds (“field recordings”).
From live sessions recorded with synthesizers, guitars and samples captured in town or in the natural environment, these celestial or oceanic sound layers take us on a journey into a parallel organic world with a form of tempered psychedelia.
This fluctuating sonic organicity invites us to find a balance in the chaos of routine and the uncertainty of everyday life (Life’s A Glitch – more rhythmic) and to rethink the – usually urban – space that surrounds us (An Excerpt…).
The selection of quasi-documentary photos taken by Martin Georgievski which appear inside the cover of this digipack CD (and in the bandcamp edition, each piece corresponds to an original photograph) with neat graphics, clearly show a certain greyness, even a kind of isolation – all the more so in this extinct period – that emanates from the concrete buildings with the brutalist aesthetic of Skopje, contrasting with the dreamlike dimension of the Bridge of Art and its elegant statues on a foggy night, or the serenity that emanates from the nearby mountains opening up to possible more colourful tomorrows (small surprise detail of this cover where a green grey dominates which fits well with a pale context).
To navigate through these sonic and filmic flows, the listener is invited to surrender to a gentle immersion also born of the organic fusion between the crystalline guitars and the electronic treatments which are subtly combined, as well as by fleeting evocations, more or less peaceful, of the sound space that surrounds us and also transforms us.
One does not know exactly if this movement is guided by hope or could turn into a slow descent into hell, but the final direction (Longest day) is towards the light.
The material swarms, diffuses, metamorphoses little by little and, in the end, Amplidyne Effect manages to overcome the persistent uncertainty and take us on its “slow trip”.