Blaze Colour Burn is an album composed of various performances and recordings by member of Mouse On Mars, Jan St. Werner…
Opener, Cloud Diachroma is extracted from an original score for a film made by visual artist Rosa Barba, and is very much in the Modern-Classical/Drone field. Pulses of formula-led noise are interspersed jarringly with beautiful strokes and swells of strings. Themes seem to clash wildy yet shatter together to form a firm melodic base. This juxtaposition never feels forced, as the sounds themselves are so impeccably produced, they only seem to feel out of place just before the aforementioned thematic fusion is completed.
The second piece (and 5th), are excerpts of a public performance given in Italy. The performance itself was a mixture of effected loops (mostly of surrounding sources, church bells, café ambience, etc) and live instrumentation. What we get from this is a very location-specific recording, perfectly capturing the atmosphere of an Italian piazza, whilst not restricting its appeal to those accustomed to that scenario. It perfectly displays the community and feeling of such a location (even going so far as to include a sizeable amount of dialogue atop wind instruments and string drones), and at a sizeable 18 minutes between the two pieces, never feels too lengthy.
The surrounding pieces are very much in the same vein (the proficient continuity throughout this album is even more impressive considering the varying compositional methods, and diverse range of influences on each piece) swaying from minimal, chime led drone of Serra Beacon, to the wildly electronic sounding Sipian Organ (a piece I strongly suspect was in fact recorded in two parts, owing mostly to the complete cut-and-pause at the 2:45 mark), all these pieces share a format (not so formulaic to be predictable by any means, but just enough to tie together whilst leaving plenty of room for interpretation) and a purpose. By eschewing traditional structural bases, the listeners mental adhesion of all the parts feels all the more satisfying, leading to a want of discovery, and a longing for further cohesion. For fans of challenging classical pieces, or orchestral-influenced drone (see, Ben Frost et al.) this is essential.