T H Y V E I L S The Diaphanous Depressions Official presentation by Dumitru Ungureanu "Observator Cultural" - Bucharest Many people still complain about the "dryness" of electronic music. It is right that compared to classical instruments a sort of dryness does exist. But this is not the problem. The reproof regards the lack of feeling transmitted by the instrumental performer. Some, more pretentious, want to hear the trumpeter’s breath, the drummer’s gasps, the contrabassist’s puffing and the bandmaster’s farts. Obviously, they listen to anything but music. Because the music listener appreciates the pure and undamaged sound. The electric instruments are accepted because there is a man who controls them; the ones simulated through computer software are fully rejected. The expression is invoked. How could a machine with electronic circuits express something? But man programs the machine and the software, with his soul, passions, sufferings, joys and hopes! Who accuses the computer of insensitivity is in this field there is almost no need to define it - totally ignorant. And the ignorance is as greatly accentuated, as the one with the opinion is “something” in the music area. But, despite its ignorers, humanity evolves. From the moment the computer entered the music instruments arena, the sound addicted have satisfactions, which were unconceivable before. The speed this instrument evolved with the quintessence of man-made instruments is amazing. In 15 20 years, the computer “swallowed” approximately three millenniums of creativity. Orpheus’ antique lyre, the wooden flute of the middle ages, B.B. King’s guitar, everything what meant music instrument can be found again in software. Of course, in order to reproduce them, the sounds were prerecorded. With the emerge of the virtual instruments, this condition is no longer necessary. From now on we will hear sounds never heard before belonging to some instruments that will never be seen, except with the eyes of our mind! Behind all these some call them horrors - steps towards accomplishment, stay thousands of people and hours of work, which a spirit like Adrian Leverkuhn, Th. Mann’s hero, would salute respectfully. Engineers and computer experts have completed the instrument. When the instrument was capable of “singing”, it found itself capable artists to use it, to “work” it out, to torture it, to push it toUp to where? For now, this up to doesn’t drag a border. An hautboy can be used, in its limits, as a percussion instrument. But as a viola or piano it’s rather difficult! The piano can be used instead of a drum because it has an acoustic resonance box with an interesting sound. To blow in it like in an ocarina would mean a gag of mute movies. But, the PC instrument can fulfill these immoderacies and many more. And even more guys dare such whacks. Some don’t wait for the end of their life in order to be proclaimed as artists. The majority starts by committing irreverence addressed to the contemporaries’ commodity. Others do not bother with small stuff. They cleave the viscosity called habit and bring out the jewel of the human condition. Musicians have this ability, left by gods: to point the absolute on a harmless part Daniel Dorobantu was destined to such an “operation”. He is one of the people who sings and delights on the PC instrument. The proven excellence in obtaining sounds, which are intermediated by the ones belonging to the computer, can create confusions. Daniel is not a genius soft programmer who compiled a marvelous program. As Paganini did not build his violins, nor Daniel writes software. He knows how to put the software to work, throwing with the mouse notes on the part and dragging febrile the controllers’ curves in concordance with his sensations, with his own feelings. Beyond the melodic innovation, beyond themes and motives, beyond ample or minimalist orchestrations, what makes Daniel Dorobantu’s music compositions singular, in the acoustic material edited under the name of Thy Veils, is exactly what the great musicians achieve thanks to their unique personality: the “touché”! Dorobantu and those like him who use in their creative process the computer achieve the dream of any composer, being that of interpreting his own creation on the dedicated instrument. The novelty is that this instrument is a complete orchestra, with woodwinds, brass winds, percussion, bow instruments, claviers and everything human imagination can musically use! The music signed Thy Veils attests the “personalization” of the PC instrument. Hence, none will freely say that this music is dry, cold, insensitive and the pure(ified) sound lovers will no longer live the fear that they have/hear too little! The first official edition of a Thy Veils album Prologue, Powerplay Rec., 1998 cropped out a particular acoustic universe, with dark and gothic influences, with an ebullient vitality, which is still appreciated today some of the fans as sensational, unique and unrepeatable. The second album Against an Oblivion of the Forgotten Abyss, Powerplay Rec., January 1999 explores the depths of that universe in songs which overwhelm you emotionally and stylistic. Savant orchestrations, superposed, easy going rhythms, with bass sounds, at the edge of endurance, unsettled the auditory commodity. The science of combining extremes is Thy Veils “brand”. On the background of a string orchestra, you would say only cellos and contrabass, with multi tambered drum insertions and persistent brass packing, a chirp of electric piano is romping in perfect harmony, on an immaculate melodic line, beautiful and conquering as a stellar explosion. In the fall of 1999 the third Thy Veils album Immemorable, is issued, till now the best sold album of the artist but also the best sold abroad album of a Romanian artist from this category. The eight songs are kind of a summary of the Thy Veils universe. They are not necessarily the best songs Daniel ever composed but they are adapted to the idea. On Immemorable explicitly appear elements of philosophical nature from the artist’s discourse. Here it can be felt in a pregnant manner that the man behind the keyboard transformed in piano keys gives to the listener something more than an ear’s delight. It could be said that Immemorable is the ars poetica Thy Veils. The opposites of this kind have a certain aridity, given exactly by the implicit “theory”. Immemorable is arid only to the level it makes itself carrier of minimalist message. The imbricate philosophy cannot transcribe its transcendence only with the price of syntactic dryness. But this is exactly what the beauty of music can express. It is a century old truism: music is philosophy! With this album, Immemorable, Thy Veils enters the “heavy weight” category of the artists, from whom we are expecting essential music pieces. The Diaphanous Depressions, first edited under Nonnut Muzik is a necessary step on the path of “absolute conquest” of the means of expression. The aggressiveness of the first two albums becomes gracious and slow. The compositions are simplified almost to the essential, which is kind of anguishing for the artist’s admirer already used with the symphonic luxuriance. Actually, Thy Veils, operates with Diaphanous Depressions a lobectomy (attention: not lobotomy!), ablating the part of commodity which installs itself in the brain of any “admirer” Thy Veils elaborates a real symphonic poem, its multicultural suggestions forming, uncovered, what Noica (famous Romanian philosopher) called “Povestiri despre om” (Tales about man). I will contour one; and anyone can amplify the search in any direction. Because it is the main quality of the symphonic music - to open the mind to new revelations, to other areas where you paradoxically or not find yourself! The album starts as if Orpheus wonders his fingers on the lyre, announcing the theme of a journey to the center of being, there where pain dwells. The journey is full of danger or at least it doesn’t avoid dark spots. So that no sign of incertitude should exist. Through the Halfdark sends you exactly in the time’s tourbillion, in a swirl of glockenspiel, on the undulated wing of the angel who will stay beside you as lead. Night Desert is the natural consequence of the ordeals you are going through, a night that starts when the simoom calms and you are invited to a (illusion of) ball, a ritual with dervish swingers, with black spirits, as in Saint Saens’ opus Macabre Dance. Here in song no. 3, you can find a perfect mixture could say sublime, if I was not to avoid great words of folk dance (of oriental influence, adequate to the journey) with what Daniel Dorobantu, the composer, avoids to tell he aims: symphony! And suddenly, The Depths! What an allurement to the thirsters of absolute who dare to bring down the mountain, going down in the interior as if they were going up! And it is normal that the descent/ascend should be followed by trumpets and bells, together with angelic voices, with the monody of the cherubim choir hidden in the clouds, somewhere to Empireus as in a famous painting. The fifth song is a same spot slew, like screwing up in own flesh, as if you want to rip out pain through a greater pain. It is a moment of distress, a furious sleep, a faint at the end of a fall or maybe a little stumble in the popped up stone on the gliding back fall. It is an odd time when you can ask yourself: but will rain wash away my pain? The piano hits like frozen drops of January rain; but why do you feel pleasure and balm in their beat? You collapse! But hear, the sound of trumpets, warning that the time that was given to you (as gift or in vain?) is not unlimited! Up, you still have to pass through a long way! And beware when the storm comes again! The cumulus clouds announce the danger, the strings, the bass, and the brasses circle above you, what are you w