Massimo Vivona - Breathe

Massimo Vivona is one of the unsung veterans of Namlook’s Fax catalog, and one of the least notorious. Most of his work in the 90s centered around the then-fashionable areas of hypnotic trance, and though ambient pieces occasionally cropped up on his Fax productions, he was known more for auguring intense beatstorms rather than becalming ambient monsoons. With this utterly captivating new long-player, Vivona’s not only flipped his own model, he’s upped the ante. Taking cues from the breathless arpeggiated fantasias of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, née the instigators of the well-defined 70s Berlin School, Vivona’s mapped out his own well-articulated star maps and plotted a true interstellar pathway to the cosmos. With reams of velvety, pulsating sequencers, skeins of prog-epic Moog, and a whole host of otherworldly vintage synths taking flight like sleek, analog eagles, Vivona’s managed to concoct a modern-day Teutonic masterpiece, broad in scope, limitless in outreach, kaleidoscopic and eventful in equal measure. This is the kind of aural galactica that many practice but few lift-off; it’s a testament to Vivona’s skills that he can so effectively marry decades of synthesizer workout with such a stark and contemporaneous feel. Beautiful, bodacious, and bold, like the grandeur of the 70s masters, this one is literally godlike.