Stephan Micus
Implosions

The last review I wrote on this site was in the summer of 2021. After a long time of being inactive, working constantly (slaving away as my dad says), I felt the need to put my thoughts down on paper again. The record I chose is a minor one, in the sense of being less known, but I certainly made it well known to my wife because I recently played it on the vinyl turntable several times. To connect with the theme of "work," here’s the typical situation in my house in recent months: I finish working and I need to take some time just for myself. So in these cases, I like to listen to something long, that unfolds horizontally for several minutes. But Amarok by Mike Oldfield, just like Crossing by Herbie Hancock, the Koln Concert by Keith Jarrett or Close to the Edge by Yes—I've listened to all of them enough to know them by heart. So, I’ll tell you that one day I started looking for new music in the vast and excellent ECM catalog, particularly the JAPO division, specialized in those transversal currents of fusion that are less rock and more "barock" (a lousy pun that illustrates how ECM doesn't fit into the standard "high" production canons).
I scroll, scroll, scroll through the pages of Discogs, listen to small samples, and then there it is! Micus. Oh yes, I've heard something of his before...
One last bit of information about me. When I find a new musician who might interest me, I start listening from the first element of the discography, to mentally qualify the musical journey once the discography is finished. That's what I did for him too, and I have come to the personal conclusion that his best work was done in his second album, from '77, which I'll talk about today.

With this second album, Micus brings out a very long piece and several shorter and slightly less valid ones.
Let's start with the suite "As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams," which is how my LP begins. Twenty minutes and some of dynamics. Ascending, descending, lateral. Notes thrown, launched, and just barely placed. Others struck heavily. It begins in the deep valleys of silence, reaching explosions at the edge of exaltation.
Singing in an invented language, not unlike other contemporaries like Magma, but with an intent that seems different, less "personalistic" and more anthropological, this work immediately makes you think of the warm Middle East and civilizations dead for millennia. All the instrumentation is played by Micus himself, showcasing a number of instruments alien to the Western tradition. The thought thus runs to the epics of Gilgamesh or images of that distant Persia which is now Iran. Right from the start, those gentle strings playing Arabesque chords suggest arabesques, vivid moments we've never lived but seem so. When the voice finally enters in the fifth minute, the magic happens; it may seem that we know this invented language very well, but we don’t; it seems so familiar, yet it isn’t. The magic lies all in the interpretation; we don’t recognize the words but the force they express, standing halfway between a prayer, a diatribe, and a festive song, lamenting and true (though they are, in effect, "fake").
As you get used to the effect, you can also notice the guitar, which seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the instrumentation, but which instead serves effectively to anchor the music to a rhythmic center. I might venture to say it's an encounter between different cultures, but since I'm not sure, I'll limit myself to finding it effective for bringing home the result of the piece.
Meanwhile, it continues. The intensity lowers, letting silences fill with reverberation, then goes back up, then down again...
Around the 12th minute, the long-awaited gallop begins: almost a cacophony of individual solos summed together to create a mass, present and tactile, of contrasting elements. A fire burning in the night. Then it goes out, leaving only the smell of smoke and incense. The stars and the last cries. Finally, one last gallop that doesn’t start, just hinted at, leaving a bitter taste.

Borkenkind is much more acoustic, and I believe it was designed to "cleanse the palate" and mind before moving on. Or simply an introduction, since it introduces side B. It is much more ambient in the sense of that image we always think of when talking about acoustic ambient or New Age. But even here, a couple of interesting ideas can be found. Amarchaj is interesting in being so quiet, so understated, slightly "drone music," considering how long the notes of the wind instruments used are sustained. It’s also proto Civilization. Yes, you know that God Game category game where you take control of a nation to bring it to prosperity? Come on, Age of Empires if you prefer. So, when starting in the prehistoric period, the beginning of each match, the sounds you hear are extremely similar to those presented here. Intimate and almost desolate, with incredible reverberations. The downside is that this seems to be the least inspired among the project's songs, a bit anonymous and, as noted, understated. It can be skipped without worry. For the Beautiful Changing Child is a different matter. Right from the start, I feel transported to another place different from the previous ones and from that of the suite, into the Mongolian steppes, and I can’t even explain why. Maybe the influence of the collective imagination, maybe those wind instruments that take us away from the Middle East to that East. But it can't be China, which, no matter how ancient and mysterious, isn't QUITE AS mysterious. The purely emotional impact of the piece suggests that at any moment something both indecipherable and catastrophic might happen to break the serene tranquility well described by the lightness of the flute. However, it’s not just this that suggests the Mongolian setting, but the fact that the subsequent song For M’sher And Djingis Khan bears the name of the most famous Mongol of all time. And here, we return to the heights of the suite, musically but also for intrinsic beauty.
To clarify, all the other songs on side B are listenable, but they don’t leave much, and at times seem to leave the time they find. I attribute this to their being predominantly based on wind instruments, something already heard many times (though in the ears of '77, it must have seemed just a bit more modern than it is now). However, where singing is accompanied by string instruments, everything lights up more, and I don't know why. This last track proves it, managing to bring the tone back to the levels of the first 20 minutes, and the two tracks frame somewhat less important things.

Ultimately, you can comfortably skip everything that follows the first song, but listen to that one because it’s worth it. And the purchase of the entire work is worth it, too, on balance.

I conclude with another personal anecdote. I have a dear friend born in Italy but with Pakistani parents. She was peremptory about the album: "It seems the guy found some Middle Eastern instruments in the basement and decided to do his interpretation of (the wrong idea) he had of that world. Asian music is something else entirely." She might be right in the end, what the hell do I know, being born far away. But you know, if all "exotica" imitations of those atmospheres were done with as much care as Micus put into this, maybe today we wouldn’t look at this genre with so much disdain. What I see in Implosions, beyond the truth or not of the sounds, is a considerable precision in building dynamics and hitting musical moments suspended in infinity. And then sometimes you just want to travel without moving your legs, sprawled on the couch after work, with an ice-cold IPA in hand, and forget everything.