I do not think I have to introduce this project anymore. It’s the main sonic outfit by Italian Raffaele Pezzella, who runs some labels too within the scenes of Dark Ambient / Electroacoustics / Drone / Space Industrial / Dark Drone / Experimental / Electronic, you know. For more information about this specific project, Sonologyst, you can check the internet, of course, or additional info provided in one of my former reviews (links: see below).
This time, Raffaele created a concept based on the Universe, for which he wanted to work with sounds from our solar system and the vast space beyond our own nearby part of the cosmos. Therefor, he made use of ‘data sonification files’ which were kindly offered by (or stolen from) N.A.S.A. These field recordings and samples are ‘magnetic, radio and plasma waves’, captured by satellites and probes. Via inventive processing techniques, and the use of analog keyboards and these field-recorded sounds, the result became a double-album that lasts for about 117 (one hundred and seventeen) minutes.
The physical edition is a two-folded ecological (!) digipack edition, which comes with very fine photographic artistry in black-and-white. The graphic design, by the way, was done by the talented visual (and musical) artist Abby Helasdottir. The DCD gets released via Cold Spring Records, a label that did work with Sonologyst several times before. Direct purchasing via the label comes with genuine stamps from the era when the human kind tried to explore the solar system. It’s one authentic stamp from the former Soviet Union (about the Venera 14 mission to Venus; 1981-1982), and one stamp from the very same period, yet chosen ad random.
The essence of the first disc is the manipulation of basically inaudible sounds, the transformation from electromagnetic and plasma waves, solar winds, cosmic radio frequencies and oscillating fields of gasses from space. As said, the sources come from N.A.S.A. documentary, based on data sonification technology. Sonologyst did refashion these noises into a very dense yet generous, even illuminating sonic experiment, including analog synths and samples. For about one hour, and carefully divided into thirteen chapters, that first part of this double album is like a sound score for that well-balanced interaction in between science and aural art. It is the conversion of unphysical post-mundane structures into a semi-claustrophobic sound-experimentation. It is, and now I will quote from the promotional text, like ‘a haunting soundscape, unveiling the ambient music of planets, solar winds, and the cosmic beyond […] converting cosmic phenomena into immersive auditory experiences’.
It is not only the scientific approach to make these textures and frequencies audible; on Planetarium’s first disc, Sonologyst manipulates these initially unnoticeable sounds towards that aforementioned sound score, which is exactly what it is. The thirteen ‘songs’ (I admit that this is not a correct description of what the individual parts from this recording stand for, yet then again…) have a core of mutual identification (that astral commonality), yet each of them comes with an own identity too. The one is floating in spacy and somewhat psychedelic territories, the other sounding oppressive and tense or even intense; some segments are rather introspective, then again reverent, or quite ethereal. The result subtly dwells within spheres of Dark Space Ambient generally seen, reminiscent of Sonologyst’s raison d’être. It is for sure an intriguing, captivating sonic phenomenon.
The second disc is a 57:08 minutes long registration of specific data sonification based recordings from our solar system, based on field-recorded sounds from planets like Uranus, Mercury or Neptune, or from moons that belong to Pluto or Jupiter, as well as from a sound recording by the sun’s coronal rain, all captured by different probes and spacecrafts (Voyager 2, Messenger etc.). It’s a remarkable piece, for it is so intriguing to listen to ambient-like sounds, droning, fluctuating, reverberating, hurtling and bouncing, and which all have their origin in our vast yet nearby space. It is exciting to differentiate repetitive patterns, soundwaves that expand then again reduce, or auditory timbres that seem to offer an organic pitch despite their astral origin at the one hand, or rather an industro-mechanical source at the other hand.
As a fancier of space science at the one hand, and Dark Drone Ambient Music at the other, Planetarium does something with me. The idea behind the concept in combination with the aural output make Planetarium a mostly interesting pièce d’art sonore for same-minded human entities…
https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/planetarium-csr359cd
https://coldspring.co.uk/csr359cd
https://sonologyst.bandcamp.com/album/planetarium
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcZpHk9VZTo
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/sonologyst
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/sonologyst-0
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/sonologyst-1
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/sonologyst-2
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/sonologyst-3
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/mb-sonologyst
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/various-artists-idil-2024