Inade
The Incarnation Of The Solar Architects

Reviewing a work that embraces the stylistic elements of ambient music is never easy. The enjoyment of such music is so subjective, and so dependent on the listener's mood (and psyche, I might add), that it inevitably leads to empty phrases and grandiose words that end up being nothing more than hollow expressions, which rather than clarify, end up diverting the reader from a real understanding of the content of the reviewed work.

This is an excellent dark ambient album: make it yours!, genre enthusiasts, and, more generally, admirers of cosmic music, the most cultured post-industrial music, the most mystical and dark avant-garde. And the review could end here. But since brevity is not a quality that distinguishes me, I will still try to give an idea of the superb music produced by the minds and machines of Knut Enderlein and René Lehmann, also known as Inade.

The German duo cleverly gathers ideas and fragments of music scattered from 2004 to 2008: ideas and fragments that, thanks to meticulous assembly and refinement, take the form of a coherent, cohesive journey with an enviable conceptual unity. "The Incarnation of the Solar Architects", their latest studio effort, and a true masterpiece of their career, consists of 10 phases that over 63 minutes well express what one can expect from such a title.

The lapping of waters and the hissing of icy cosmic winds accompany us on a restless sidereal journey through the secrets of the Universe and the Soul, halfway between an interstellar voyage and an intimate spiritual path. And already, as expected, grandiose words abound.

Let's therefore stick to the facts: the primary reference is certainly the Clusterian exploration in its most epic and mystical meaning, not free, however, from the learned teachings of a Klaus Schulze and a Florian Flicke, and certainly not unrelated to an industrial tradition that takes its first steps with the essential Throbbing Gristle and evolves with the dark movements of entities such as Non and Coil in their more ambient tests.

But it's important to clarify one thing: where a musical style such as dark-ambient creates a framework of psychic suggestions through emptiness and absence, Enderlein and Lehmann rediscover themselves as learned musicians who build their artistic conception through a reasoned path dense with content, imbued with that pragmatism that distinguishes the mindset and modus operandi typical of Germany: their journey constantly evolves, reviewing the most diverse scenarios, in a context of sonic constructions and solutions (even melodic!) that lead to estrangement, yet do not rely on the easy ploy of extremist minimalism (of the series: "I bore you until you hallucinate"): no!, nothing of the sort, the entity Inade erects a monument with well-defined contours, which if it appears evanescent, it is so due to the complexity of its architecture and the labyrinthine capillarity of its corridors and rooms. An observation that, even in its undeniably science fiction meaning (see the spatial effects, the inhuman voices navigating in the void), admits typical elements of sacred music (from the tribal component, to the organ parts, through unsettling Gregorian chants that seem to come from a cosmic spirits sect hidden in the most unimaginable crevices of the universe's vastness), thus moving, with ease, between arcane and futuristic, constantly oscillating between an era where Nothing still dominated, and another that stands beyond the extinction of the Cosmos.

The final rendition of the work thus approaches the canons of a cinematic music that could very well serve as a soundtrack for certain films by directors like Kubrick, Herzog, and Tarkovsky, lent only when needed to the science fiction imagination, but far more interested in exploring the philosophical implications of 20th-century existentialist thought. That's why it's legitimate to associate the breadth of visions, inherent in the immensity of the Universe, to the abyss hidden within Man, his fears, his unsolvable questions, his inclinations to the Absolute.

In the intense seventh track "From the Angle of Aleph", for example, it is as if the gates of perception are thrown open, and it is the sole episode I feel like mentioning in the context of an experience that truly should be savored all at once, undisturbed, preferably in solitude, in the dark, as if it were a mysterious ritual to practice in full possession of one's mental faculties. Because Inade's music requires active participation from the listener, who like an explorer (astonished and bewildered) is called upon to interact directly and navigate the cosmic intrigues in which they have become entangled. 

What was there before Creation?, before the tremendous Big Bang that shook everything and gave rise to the known Universe? What will there be after the Apocalypse, after the annihilation of Everything by unspeakable forces? We probably will never have the answers, but in the meantime, we can console ourselves by savoring this album that demonstrates how Art still knows today how to describe the Unknown and everything to which we cannot give a name.

Happy exploration...