Ondas

Album review

Estampie was, in the 1980s and early '90s, a legit, straight-ahead early music ensemble that interpreted medieval music within the conventional trappings of period with period instruments. In 1991, the group discovered synthesizers and formed a parallel group, Qntal, which developed a mixture of medieval music and synth-pop, a hybrid it claims to have invented, though if so, entry of a wide range of other artists into this field was immediate (Dead Can Dance came into the door so quickly that they managed to precede Qntal by a decade). Proper accreditation for hybrid styles aside, with Qntal taking off, eventually Estampie needed to be retired, and 1999's Ondas was the longstanding early music group's sendoff. Anyone looking for early music, as such, in this will be disappointed, as it sounds just like Qntal. To his credit, principal composer Michael Popp doesn't even try to typify these amped up, goth-styled creations as being reflective in any way of genuine medieval music, most pieces deriving their texts, but in an only superficial way music, from the medieval repertoire. That begs the question as to how Ondas performs within its own context, with the answer being that it's terribly pretentious, self-important, and over the top for the most part, particularly O Fortuna, which is so pompous and arrogant it's almost laughable, sounding like a medieval Adam and the Ants. They should have just called Ondas a Qntal album, as that is what this is. However, even if one taste's runs to goth electro-pop, this will seem ridiculous.

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