roots in heaven: petites madeleines

Roots In Heaven is a Berlin-based act that could very easily capitalize on his past accomplishments within the world of intrepid electronic music. As a label owner, resident DJ at cutting-edge clubs, and accomplished solo artist behind a number of conceptually unique full-length albums, the conceiver of this project won't likely need any introduction. As an extension of this artist's already solid commitment to deep sound, Roots In Heaven represents a new voyage without the help of biographical cues to his listeners: hidden behind an evocative mesh mask lined with obsidian feathers, Roots In Heaven ignores the need to provide "social proof" or self-justification. He communicates purely through the language of concentrated sensory impression, for which reason he has titled his debut, Petites Madeleines, after one of the most memorable descriptive sequences in literary history, the famous meditation on the madeleine from Proust's À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu (1913). Built on a chassis of pure analog electronics, unaided by computers, Petites Madeleines presents a single sprawling track whose immersive, meditative quality initiates participants into a realm of reversed energy currents. Using a sonic technique which, for example, drapes the listener in darkness until it becomes light (and vice versa), this piece provides a pervasive feeling of other realities opening up that complement the already familiar. The looped pulses and frequency sweeps hover and expand with all the assuredness of early-'70s Cluster, but without anything consciously "retro" or overt references in their presentation. Though the project is as opposed to the current trend of distortion overload as it is opposed to cults of personality, Petites Madeleines occasionally bristles with an abrasiveness that separates it from more patronizing experiments in raising/altering consciousness. As feedback drones and anxious percolations snake their way around the base structure of pulses and subterranean thumps, there is a feeling of challenge or self-confrontation that should be a component of any truly serious spiritual quest. As listeners successfully confront and assimilate these somewhat harsher moments, the cosmic tapestry being woven by Roots In Heaven becomes all the more vibrant and charged with deeply personalized meaning. By the time this hour-long excursion ends, all the constituent sound elements seem to hum and vibrate in unison, allowing listeners to find a whole world within this recording just as Proust found a world within his tea and madeleines.