Rain

After almost 2 years of waiting for new material, I was excited to hear Simon had put out what could be called his 'debut single'. Needless to say, I am VERY impressed!

On "Piano in the Rain", Simon has tried something new - taking his ambient style and condensing it into a 7 minute piece. Not an easy feat, I bet, considering the average length of his ambient stuff exceeds 30 minutes! It's a very pleasant listen - soft yet stark, warm yet... er... outside getting wet!?

"L'arc-en-ciel" is the biggest curve-ball he's thrown yet. It's got a drum on it! Honest, no-fooling drums! It's a powerful peice that just explodes out of your speakers and then lets your ears pick up the aftermath.

It's great to hear something new in both respects - brand new music in a new style. Just goes to show you can't pidgeon-hole him as an ambient musician!

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... SIMON SLATOR IS BACK!!!

More or less by 'accident' I discovered Simon Slator here on Jamendo and listened to some albums, from which I found Rain the best, until now. But still, it is missing something.

I was especially surprised to see the comparison with Vangelis and Mike Oldfield here. In general there is often a conflict between what an artist wants or likes to make and what a consumer, like me, would like to hear. But these two mentioned artists have proved that they know how to handle this. And that is also something I am missing now with Simon's music.

In general I have the idea that he has nothing, or at least not much, to say to me. And that makes his music more or less boring. No, not bad at all, and his style is even improving. But I sure hope it will do this more in the (near) future. I even decided to add support for this artist and Jamendo into http://musicbrainz.org/ a music database with extensive user support and also stimulator of the Creative Commons principle.