Kliment - The Perpetual Ritual

Kliment Dichev is out with his first physical release after a string of digital only releases covering Psytrance, Progressive and Ambient. Released on Electrik Dream Records it was not what I was expecting. I was expecting something a little more electro, a little more upbeat and to be honest not quite this good. A pleasant surprise all round then as Kliment has taken his influences and mixed it with his own sounds very nicely. You can tell from the music that Kliment has been heavily influenced by Simon Posford in that you can hear elements that are easily related back to the big man’s back catalogue of chillout music. There are a lot of Shpongle like flutes through just about every track, there are Celtic Cross like guitars in a few creating an atmosphere like being in the American countryside at night searching for UFOs and even twisted synths and samples along with dubby basslines like Hallucinogen in Dub.

Kliment, though, has not just copied someone else’s sound and tried to pass it off as his own, no no no! He has mixed these elements with his own style. The atmospheres he creates are unique to him and there are elements that are not just from Simon Posford’s late nineties repertoire. There is more of an ethnic feeling to it than what I've heard in Shpongle, more of a spacey feeling than I what I've heard in Celtic Cross and the sample work is very different. The samples are actually my main problem with this album. I just really don’t like the sounds of the voices that have been chosen. There is something in the tone of the voice that rubs me the wrong way. They somehow feel far too smug for my liking. Also some of the sounds are little too ethnic for my liking and Kliment borders on being Shanti Shanti psychill without ever crossing over into being cheesy (but he's close).

The best tracks are Ether Aesthetics (T2) which has such a great melodic bassline that makes me just want to bounce along with it, perfect danceable chillout; Behind The Steps Of Death (T3) which feels like Celtic Cross 2 with a beautiful mix a space and earth tones; Arowana (T7) which could be on a Hallucinogen in Dub album if they wanted to go down a more ethnic track and The Interstellar Orchestra (T8) which has melodies played on many different instruments both string and wind, acoustic and electronic it seems.

Recomendation:  This is a very good album, if you don’t mind that a lot of the sounds used are heavily influenced by other artists so that you can feel other people’s stamps all over it. If you are the sort of person that screams copycat at the slightest influence, then you will probably not appreciate this. If you can enjoy music for the music itself and you like deep spacey, slightly ethnic tribal ambient/downtempo then you’ll like this. This is not pushing the scene forward in any way but it is still a very enjoyable album.