ALTERNATIVE 4: The Brink (ATMOSPHERIC ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

It is very likely that the Alternative 4 group does not mean anything to most of you. Nothing could be more normal since "The Brink" is the first album of this young band. On the other hand, the most discerning may remember an Anathema album released in 1998 with the same name. Coincidence? Not really when you consider that the main composer of Anathema's record is also the creator of the Alternative 4 project, Duncan Patterson.

After six albums with Anathema ("Alternative 4" being the last one, Patterson leaving his acolytes for musical differences), two and a half with Antimatter, where he shares the leadership with Michael Moss, two with Ion where he is the only master on board, and multiple participations in various projects, needless to say that the man is not at his first attempt. Far from being tired (and tiring his listeners), Duncan Patterson seems to have an inexhaustible creative intelligence coupled with a sensitivity that allows him to instinctively find the fragile balance of a bare, cyclical and yet so exciting music.

Because "The Brink" is the archetype of the atmospheric disc, in the noble sense of the word. May aficionados of instrumental prowess, stubborn ritorns that hold back from the first listening, decibel debaucheries or wild melodies go elsewhere to seek their pleasure. With two tenuous notes, repeated over and over again, a sigh (in the musical sense of the word), the caress of a butterfly wing on the cymbals and a very dark bass line, Duncan Patterson creates a deep emotion, drowning us in a flood of images that this music, most often oscillating between pianissimo and mezzo piano, evokes with a disconcerting ease.

Each piece creates a dark, oppressive, disturbing and vaguely rious climate, the whole being remarkably homogeneous. This does not exclude a few more intense, more violent moments, allowing the play of contrasts to enhance the beauty of these tracks as in the very sustained chorus of 'False Light', with a beautiful drum set, powerful keyboards, a loud and clear voice, the vindictive and very heavy electric guitar of the second musical bridge of 'Still Waters', or the brutal sound aggressions of the saturated electric guitars on the central part of 'The Dumbing Down'.

But these are exceptions that are used sparingly. Most often the music develops slowly, in spirals that widen or narrow around a musical theme composed of a few notes. The atmospheres are hushed, intimate, minimalist, like the refined "Autonoma" which, with its four notes repeated at the same tempo during the five minutes of the piece, creates a bewitching and dramatic title, or the long cover of "The Brink", 14 minutes of a simplistic and even basic theme (3 piano notes, always the same, on the same rhythm, with the same gap), which is gradually enriched by a multitude of sound elements (a drum set, like Mason on the Floyd's atmospheric tracks, a discreet bass line, evanescent choirs, a lightweight synthesizer) making the track extremely bewitching and successful.

Duncan Patterson has found the right balance to break all monotony. Without any demonstration, all in subtlety, "The Brink" is one of the best atmospheric rock albums of recent years. - Official website

ALTERNATIVE 4

THE BRINK

AVANTGARDE MUSIC

ATMOSPHERIC ROCK