Canovas, Javi

Artists: Javi Canovas
P: 2011
‘Open Flux’ is something of a scene setter. It’s as if dawn is breaking over a misty landscape. ‘Perception’ gets underway with beautiful plucked strings hanging in the air then decaying into the distance. Lush, warm backing adding a shimmering heat haze. Things take a decidedly dark twist for ‘Aeternus’, the sun going behind a mountain, leaving the valley in shadow. ‘Empty Memory’ takes us back to warmer realms but this time with a hint of sadness. Things are peaceful but somehow not as they were. Something is missing. ‘Downfall’ doesn’t lift the mood but to me provides a meditative atmosphere from which answers can come. ‘Echoes from the Dryland’ is a beautiful number with gorgeous flute drifting over a lush reverberating backing. Maybe we now have peace of mind and are moving on. ‘Fractal Dimensions’ drifts along pleasantly enough. We get to another flute lead piece, ‘Age of Irreality’. The mood is similar to ‘Echoes…’ but with a hint of sadness. So far all the tracks seem to have gone together as different chapters of the same story. We now move on to a new quest for the five-part title track. The opening section fizzes into life then settles down to a moody soundscape where unpleasant things could be lurking in the mist. The second part uses the most exquisite combination of sounds with bubbling effects giving it all a rather primordial swamp like feel a bit like a slightly more melodic version of ‘Zeit’. I absolutely loved it. The next section is brighter with a slow lead meandering around warmer shimmers. The fourth is like an approaching storm with chollyThe final chapter has a subtle melodic quality and overall is all rather tranquil and dreamy. It’s a lovely way to finish a gorgeous album. Javi may be well known for his Berlin School outings but this album is a real must for Robert Rich fans, especially Aureal 1 to 5.

Artists: Javi Canovas
P: 2019
‘Sima’ has rapid sequencing reminding me of J.M.Jarre’s ‘Arpegiator’ and I’m immediately catapulted into head-nodding mode as this is very entrancing!
‘Descent’ starts with a single note tone followed and joined by rhythmic sequencing that sound reminiscent of Edgar Froese’s ‘Drunken Mozart In The Desert’. A second rhythm joins in with effects and is rather hypnotic stuff!
‘Masker’ starts with an unusual jerky but interesting rhythm and atmospheric swooshes, being joined by accompanying notes, and is a very enjoyable piece.
‘Axiom’ starts with cathedral-like atmospheric swooshes, then a 100 mile an hour sequencer is deployed followed by a second and I imagine hurtling along on a ‘space-bike’ through a continuously morphing alien landscape as the music builds to a completely body moving trance-experience. It all fades into atmos’. Fantastic!
‘Invisible Symbol’ plays piano that create feelings of emotion, sadness and reflective thoughts. Beautiful playing with atmospheric synth doodlings that make this piece stand out to reach your heart.
‘Hydrometry’ starts with rapid sequencing and is joined by effects and lead lines and atmospherics that break back down into atmospheric end. Nice one.
‘Crush’ opens with blippy sounds and a mid-paced sequence that builds with a bassy thudding rhythm and added sequencing that builds and peaks. Play this on your car stereo on the motorway or autobahn and you are likely to exceed all speed records!
‘Forbidden Zone’ brings us atmos’ and weird effects in waves and random notes with synth washes and even more effects, and it is all very enjoyable.
‘Relapse’ is immediately very rhythmic with effects and is the polar opposite of the previous track, and sounds like a classic tune with a sense of purpose. A lead line and I am reminded of mid-80’s Klaus Schulze. The strength in this album is in it’s variety.
‘The Seeker’ begins with a 5 note rhythm and atmos’, then extra notes are added to the rhythm and it gradually builds to a rapid sequency rhythm and washes of atmospherics. Wonderful!
‘Transcription’ has bouncy rhythm joined by atmospherics and builds in volume and intensity, with effects along the way, giving a sense of automaton.
‘Allegory’ is a fantastic piece of rhythmics and effects not too different to the industrial-synth-pop of artists like ‘Mesh’ and ‘Tenek’ of the UK and Europe. This is something that I could actually imagine being played in any night club that specialises in ‘industrial dark synth’ music! I absolutely loved this piece!
‘Almost Imperseptible’ opens with atmospherics and a rapid rhythm keeps appearing with Jarre-like effects and a lead line plays over the top, sounding epic!
‘Heavy Colour’ has atmos’ and is heavy with effects and an air of anticipation. I feel like I am in a huge dark chamber, forever? A huge sound washes over and a half heard rhythm comes and goes. It’s actually quite soothing and relaxing along similar lines to John Foxx’s ‘Cathedral Oceans’ ambient albums.
Overall an excellent albums of shorter pieces with plenty of variety that show off Javi’s versatility and creativity.
Review by Geoff Mason.

Artists: Javi Canovas
P: 2010
Whether it be rampaging Berlin School sequencing or contemprary powerhouse EM Javi Canovas instills the sort of quality that lifts him above the hum-drum. Uplifting, dynamic, sensational! His music will inspire.
Pure ambient sonics from Javi Canovas.

Artists: Javi Canovas
P: 2013
Slow synth layers spread their passive wings of which the contrasting tones float such as the breezes from an oasis of melancholy. "No Place to Stay" is the entering door from Javi Canovas' 14th album; a quiet album, the den of contemplativity. After an album bubbling of clanic rhythms, released earlier this year, Javi Canovas comes back to present us a much more peaceful album. “Cracks in the Air”, a title which depicts with poetry all its musical structure, joins the somber meditative reflections that we found on Behind the Shadows in 2010. Set by 10 titles which vary between 3 and 10 minutes, the Spanish synthesist walks on Steve Roach's hollow territories, "One Existence", and sounds his chloroformic horizons, "Overtime" with an enigmatic album where the ambient music is tint of a restful musicality.
"Fatum" embraces a somber aura of mystery with its sibylline breaths which grumble between the sinuous spaces of monoliths and raise sonic particles so much bitter as the sands from the deserts of rocks. We comfortably sit in Steve Roach's Australian territories, percussions less, with an album filled with dark winds. Winds witnesses of a faded civilization while that "The Structure of Illusion" illuminates a little the musicality with fine chords of an acoustic guitar which commune with themselves in melodious winds. Dreamer, "Paranoid Voice" lies down its somber strata filled of nostalgia in the soft winds of voices which sound like the worn breaths coming out of those Vuvuzela. "Memory Dismantled" marries a little the abstruse ambiences of "Paranoid Voice" by spreading a sonic shroud where the veiled singings of magnetic resonances bring us towards another level of mystification. The synth lines with delicate breaths of oracles rest on these darker strata, they are even more lugubrious, showing this surprising parallel between the blackness and the brightness which crosses the 56 minutes of “Cracks in the Air”. I say 56 minutes because the title-track offers a bouquet of sequences which dance calmly on an attractive ambient structure. This is a great based sequences track which shows all the rhythmic prose of Javi Canovas. After this fleeting rhythmic interlude "Aevum" plunges us back into the morphic sweetnesses which filled the airs of Steve Roach's Structures from Silence. It's a very beautiful ambient title which completes marvellously the too short "Overtime", while that "Ultimate Nature of Mirage" turns around the same torments of these wild winds which moved "One Existence".
A little as in Behind the Shadows, “Cracks in the Air” inhales these fascinating figures of ambient music which drinks of Steve Roach's meditative spheres and even Robert Rich. It's an album of dark ambient music, even very sibylline, where a subtle duel between the tones of black and white clears a restful musicality. This is why I do love ambient music.
Sylvain Lupari
 

Artists: Javi Canovas
P: 2020
'Expulsion' begins with gentle waves of ambient electronic organ sounds. My imagination is taking me on a long space journey, as if asleep in cryostasis. After 4 minutes effects start to be added and things gradually build. A low note bass sound is followed by a strange sequency section but layed back! I really found this interesting. At nearly 10 minutes in a rapid sequence comes forward, with flute and effects, and I am being mesmerised by this beautiful magic. More sequencer lines are added then a lead line dances over the top and I am in a state of euphoric trance! Nearly 15 minutes and a quite deep pounding rhythm underpins this fantastic brew and the music peaks. I imagine hurtling along in a space chase avoiding asteroids and space debris, turning this way and that way! At about 18 minutes there is a fantastic keyboard playing section with lead lines and effects at a fast pace. There is so much going on like berlin-school heaven and back! Wow! I love this. At over 24 minutes the track only calms to ambience within the last minute. What a track! 'Pbs Route' starts with relaxed and spiritual ambient sound, very heart and soul cleansing! New sounds appear at about 3 minutes then soon an undulating hypnotic sound powers through with strange effects, quite weird, as if drug induced! It subsides and a sequence rapidly builds in pace and volume, full of attitude with a mid-70's TD feel to it, but better! Effects and sequencing join in and I imagine taking part in a 'space race'! This is incredibly hypnotic euphoric music, and a great pitch-bending lead line plays along. By 14 minutes it breaks down as the layers are stripped away to a calm atmospheric choral and organ section which gives a lovely ending to this piece. My favourite so far! Amazing! 'Dead End' starts with strange sounds as if I am in a huge chamber with haunting noises, then organ sounds also bring a rapid sequnce, and effects which come and go. A deeper sequence appears at 6 minutes and builds higher until a flute and high register sequence joins in and again I am flying along in my imaginative world of dreams! Layers are being added and this sounds so full with lead lines and rhythms that I am in raptures! At 15 minutes it dissipates into relaxing chillout ambient synth noises, but only for a single breath when a new sequency rhythm starts with another deeper one! Sounds and effects come and go, and it's a bit more relaxed than before. At about 21 minutes we come to an atmospheric dead end. In my opinion this album has a 10 out of 10 for quality berlin school that has elements of trance that gives it a more euphoric twist. An absolutely essential album that will withstand repeated listening pleasure!

Artists: Javi Canovas
P: 2013
Fans of a progressive EM style like Berlin School or/and its derivatives have sometimes tepid ears. We like these long structures which perspire the improvisations all along rhythms unstitched by intuitive sequences which cross the ambiences of bluish ether that lead us near transitory dreams. Thus, when we learn that one of the true values wants to bring us to the borders of World Music, we have the ears which grimace. And nevertheless we shouldn't. “Desert Dawn” from Javi Canovas is an album of delicate Berber musical incantations where the clanic rhythms are swirling in the echoes of tom-toms and of their extremely tightened skins. Rhythms of silk which don't pour into techno nor brush it, giving an exotic musicality which sings through layers of synths and of their hybrid whistles to the charms of the warm Arabian nights.
"Atlas" invites us in the new musical fragrances of Javi Canovas with delicate arpeggios daydreaming on a rhythmic embryo livened up by an uncertain bass line and percussions Tablas. Very harmonious, the intro floats in oniric vapors before being collided by strong percussions, struck with bedazzled hands, and by a bass line with throbbing chords. This combination structures a mesmerizing Arabian hip-hop where enchants a synth and its breaths of snake charmers. Blazing, "Atlas" offers a good mixture of percussions to eclectic tones which reminds me a little of Jean Michel Jarre's rhythmic moods on his famous Egyptian night with more slamming percussions and a slightly stroboscopic structure which bites some more ethereal clanic atmospheres. "River Luccus" fills our ears with an almighty rhythm of West Indian folklore which swirls with exhilaration on the breaths of synth singing the charms of the Gobi Desert. This fusion of “Desert Dawn”'s World Music reaches its peak on "River Luccus" with a wild polka which sets our feet on fire, stamping on the harmonies which sing against the current. Delicious and very lively! "Thar" proposes then a very meditative intro with notes of a fanciful harp which roam in some musical winds carried by the heat of the deserts of Magreb. We hear well those clanic tom-toms trying to awaken the rhythm, but the dense synth layers are masking the pale rhythmic reflections. And it's bit by bit that "Thar" embraces the curves of a lascivious tribal dance with tom-toms more fed and notes of sitar which are flavoring a Bedouin dance wrapped in a suave heat of a synth to in melodious Arabian breaths which cannot contain the rhythmic heaviness that hugs "Thar" a little after its 10th minute.
"Blue Desert" begins the 2nd portion of Javi Canovas' intrusion in the rhythms of the world with a lighter approach. Shimmering notes and Tablas percussions are ringing in harmonies, weaving a rhythm finely embroidered in intertwined filets that Arabian flutes caress of their soft tribal harmonies. I like "Fes", while that initially it left me of ice. Its rhythm structure is heavy and rumbling, like on "Atlas", but with an airier harmonious envelope where a piano is running there and dances of its xylophone keys under the breaths of the flutes which didn't leave the quiet ambiences of the title-track. It's quite nice and light. And the orchestrations save the day of a track that would be flat without them. "Nouadibhou" is what that it's closer to the territories of conventional EM with its delicate poetic intro where dusts of stars float in cosmic winds of ether. The synth layers are undulating lazily there, freeing fluty breezes on a cinematographic dune where are dragging some beatings of mislaid percussions and a chain of abrasive sequences which lose all sense of rhythm in these intense vapors of iodine. The rhythm wakes up at around the 5th minute. Arched on percussions to hollow timbres and graffiti of xylophone to tones of anvil, it swings its furtive tempo like a leg hanging in space, making sing the flutes of Babylon. This rhythm, at first sight furtive, espouses a clearly noisier tangent with an avalanche of clanic percussions which make resound their shimmering skins in a languishing approach of tribal waltz, there where are always singing these flutes charmer of snakes.
Like what that one can be different and remain good! That's what comes to mind while listening to this last effort of Javi Canovas whose surprising intrusion in the Arabian spheres listens to with a disconcerting ease. Without kissing the paths of a techno to the disturbing rhythms of Turkey, “Desert Dawn” is a lively exotic album where the percussions enchant in their roles prevailing on sequences, shaping rhythms of wild local dances. Synths are discreet, certainly! They weave Berber harmonies where the Arabic flutes are whipping the cosmic breezes and the dusts of dunes, creating the ideal balance for an album with the charms of the 1001 Arabian nights.
Sylvain Lupari (February 26th, 2013)

Artists: Javi Canovas
P: 2008
An audacious mixture between cosmic and space music filled of metallic droning waves which collide on rhythmic structures bordering rock and funk, in a Mellotron atmosphere which reminds certain passages of TD and even Schulze, in particular on Where Was The Time. Diversified, colored and very rhythmic, Eigenscapes is an album to multiple musical approaches demonstrating that Javi Canovas is not just another synthesist among so many others. But an audacious musician who is not afraid of deepening his ideas by adding touches of funk and rock, in a constantly evolving sound universe.