Chronotope Project: Gnosis
Spotted Peccary Music

Jeffrey Ericson Allen's gift for creating state-of-the-art ambient is well-accounted for on his ninth Chronotope Project release, his fifth under the name for Spotted Peccary Music. But the melodic eloquence that sets the Oregon-based composer's music apart from other genre practitioners is revealed in its fourth track, “The Still Small Voice: The Muse Speaks.” The muse does truly speak through Allen in this remarkably beautiful piece, though its's also hardly the only time it does so.

A quick scan of the track titles reveals that Allen's grounded the project in Ancient Greek Philosophy, with references to the Forms, Entelechy, and the Cave Myth indicating associations with Plato and Aristotle. Consistent with that is the choice of album title, Gnosis being one of many Greek words for knowledge, specifically that which is gained through experience. Music and philosophy, two long-standing passions of the composer's, converge on this superb addition to the Chronotope Project discography. It hardly surprises that someone whose moniker includes a word referencing the unity of space and time would conceive an album project with ancient philosophy concepts in mind.

Different labels might be used to describe the Chronotope Project style, among them progressive ambient music, contemplative art music, and ambient-electronic. The one that might come closest, however, to what he's doing here is sound painter when Allen uses his electronic gear and cello to produce luscious, evocative soundscapes. A key part of Allen's sound arsenal is the Haken Continuum Fingerboard synthesizer, whose delicate, wooden flute-like timbres are heard throughout the recording in a lead capacity.

The epic scope of the project is intimated by its opening “Higgs Field: Cauldron of Being,” whose cosmic arpeggios call to mind the ‘70s iteration of Tangerine Dream. Allen's command is resoundingly evident in the layering of elements and the graceful unspooling that transpires across its seven minutes. Augmenting the sparkle of synthesizers is the glissando sweep of the Haken Continuum and percussion textures. A cello bass pattern nicely grounds “Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness,” which Allen fashioned from the image of souls shedding their mortal memories as they drift down Lethe, one of the five rivers of Hades. Electric piano adds another resonant texture, but it's the Haken Continuum that conveys the feeling of languorous drift. Though a sense of harmonic drift remains, a more epic, even galaxial tone reinstates itself for “Eidos, Realm of the Forms,” appropriately so given the character of the latter (for Plato, the immaterial Forms are more ‘real' than the individual instances of them that compose the material world). A Moog-styled solo emerges halfway through, however, to give the piece an ELP flavour, along with another unexpected element, tabla. The journey from subterranean depths to the surface in Plato's Cave Myth is a metaphor for the soul's increasing enlightenment as it departs the realm of shadows for truth and understanding. In parallel manner, Allen's “Myth of the Cave” slowly emerges from a state of eerie gloom to bask in the illuminating glow of harp, strings, choir, and other elements.

October 2021