PLEASURE (2005)

Total time: 50:23

Recorded: 2001
Distributed: 2005

 

This album contains previously unreleased material recorded several years ago. They were like ‘hints’ of my inner mood and express the hidden path of sensuality in its purest form. For this reason I didn’t want to technically adjust the musical material, though some titles might contain some corrections. I think the reflection of the initial impulse of the feeling definitely marks the ‘colour’ of the whole piece, especially when it is about love and erotism…

May this music open the gate of the celestial love in our beings…

INDRA

REVIEWS

“Pleasure is a hybrid album where Indra establishes his vision of sensuality on moods of the 80’s and then leads us towards his most beautiful e-ambient ballads.” (Sylvain Lupari, Canada)

 

We look at the artwork and we understand of what will be made Pleasure! It’s been a while that I have this album and I was always reluctant to approach it. What’s to be done with a rather suggestive music? The first time that I heard it, I was sitting on the fence. To tell the truth, I had stopped at “Together”! Which was a little mistake, and you will see why. But don’t get me wrong here. I think it’s good music but not just in my vein.

To me, Indra revisited the lands of the lascivious dances and moods of Software, on Digital-Dance, or Food For Fantasy or still Robert Schroëder on his groove era. So a lot of you should like this. We are very far, but very far from the Berlin School style and these mesmerizing long minimalist rivers to which the Rumanian synthesist had so skillfully accustomed us since we heard his magnificent The Call of Shiva back in 2005. Certainly, there were several discoveries since then, but never Indra had gone out of his comfort zone so widely in order to offer a music directly bound to the carnal charms. Because it is really this pleasure that Indra calls out with Pleasure, to say the least of its first part.

As for the second one, it’s quite another story. Composed and recorded at the end of the 90’s and remixed twice since then, this album which will guide you near the sensualism; as spiritual as cosmic and physical, will eventually find on the other hand its way if we take the effort to go up to the end. Because if the first 24 minutes of Pleasure, including very beautiful “Beauty”, will sound like a kind of sensual awakening, its 2nd part will invite you to a real lunar feast.

Such as fragile arpeggios which hesitate like snowflakes trapped in an uncertain sky, “Pleasure (Remix)” spreads its ambiguity towards a slow down-tempo where a big bass line caws on the back of the waves of an ocean which we guess to be very close by. The rhythm is lascivious and knotted behind some slow orchestrations which waltz pleasantly under a sonic painting eaten away by a festive and tribal approach from the Islands of the pleasure. Quite slowly, the title goes adrift towards a magnificent serenade which would make Yanni go pale. We can’t say that it’s not good, even if that is not our musical style. The effect of sensualism aimed by Indra strikes right in the target with a soft rhythm and airs of saxophone which melt perfectly in the tears of the fanciful violins.

I quite liked it, just as I enjoyed very much “Beauty” which, according to me, is a musical jewel in what concerns the melodious, melancholic and sensual genre. The crystalline notes of piano, crying on the solitary chords of an acoustic guitar, as well as the lascivious Chinese violins are transporting us in the dreamland and the chivalrous illusions which lulled our childhoods. Surprisely, I hear a kind of Chinese cosmic western …

“Calling Amos (Remix)” is a short title filled by the fragrances of the tropical islands with its rain and thunders which pierce an attractive electronic serenade, perturbed by a sensual voice.

If I’m hearing a bit of Software, it’s nothing compared to “Fatal Woman” and its very suggestive rhythm. This is a kind of a slow sensual jazz where a languishing duet of saxophone, which reminds me of the vibes we find on Digital-Dance, is courting a delicate piano.

I could say that only “Together” goes with the aseptic melodies which could play in an elevator or at the doctor’s waiting-room. If its delicious intro very bucolic enchants, its part livened up by a suggestive rhythm and sung by a kind of mixture guitar/synth/saxophone has the gift to annoy. But I warn you; after two listening we hang on it. It’s after this track that the pleasure to hear Pleasure grows with the use. Because after this “Together” track, the next 27 minutes make us derive towards some very beautiful cosmic melodies which have nothing to envy to the repertoire of Vangelis.

I told you that “Beauty” was a small jewel, but “Lorena” is even more radiant of sensibility. Melancholic and black at wish, Indra lays down here a wonderful ballad where our ears are the temple of our sensitivity. There is a very beautiful mixture of sensualism and serenity on this track which lulls my restless nights since that it has assailed my ears.

And what to say about “Fairies of the Dawn”? A superb ambio-cosmic track with synth lines to the spectral singings. A little as in TD’s Legend.

And “Heaven Path (Remix)”? Vangelis escaped a black serenade somewhere!

“The Field” is a bonus track in this new remix. And it’s a superb ethereal movement which has nothing to envy to the ambient music of Brian Eno. It is very beautiful and that concludes a hybrid album where the first part overflies ambiences common to the more commercial works of Software, and Robert Schroëder and the second half entails us where Indra excels best. To get! If only for the last 27 minutes.

Sylvain Lupari (November 10th, 2014) – Synth&Sequences