This review must be written from the end. »Intimate Immensity« is the last album of Tomaga. Tom Relleen, one half of the London duo (next to Valentina Magaletti), died of stomach cancer in 2020 at the age of 42. It is therefore the conclusion and at the same time the culmination of a development that has lasted since 2013, counting a dozen or so releases in total.In their last track on this album released by Hands In The Dark, the identically titled »Intimate Immensity«, the entire power and beauty of their music culminates once again at the very end. It flows, it flies, it breathes, it lives. We hear something that sounds like a beginning, yet is the end. – Tom Relleen’s inspiration for the album was the book »The Poetics of Space« by Gaston Bachelard. One chapter from it, »Intimate immensity« also gave the album its name. The French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote of Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenology that it had taught us »that we do not live in a homogeneous and empty space, but in a space charged with qualities, perhaps also populated by phantasms.« (translated by the author) A sentence that can also be said about the music of Tomaga. A music that creeps into your inner being and fills you up.
Melos Kalpa
Melos Kalpa
Hands In The Dark