Nice start, a lovely intro. Whirlpool of Memory has a lovely lilt to it and good intonation. Good enough to save a nation! Excellent fusion with a magical other-world transcendence ingrained beautifully well, without being long-form. Clever ability. Well controlled sense of drama in the second track, nice keyboards, simple but effective.
Jazz for me when I was a child was Krupa and Buddy Rich, then I discovered Billy Cobham, Buddy Miles, Weather Report and Pat Metheny's collective. To listen to this album is about re-experiencing all that and more. More, because of the fusion but more because music is a fantastic means of communication. That seems a subtle presence here, and even if not, great sounds in the meantime.
Looking at the track titles suggests a metaphor of current affairs, but that's very present in my mind and part of my subjective assimilation of these great sound constructions. Music has always been a preferable way to get a point across, be it regarding things on a personal level upwards to the way the world in functioning, or not, as the case may be. When I was a teenager, my musical tastes were very politically motivated.
786 Miles has a wonderful sense of calm before the storm in a manner of speaking, even though the invasion has already taken place, maybe not yet the bombardment. Is it the length of the proposed pipeline, or am I being too cynical? I would like to think that there is a point to this lovely musical creation. What a way to go about transferring, roots-up viewpoints and educating the masses of people who download and go even, maybe subliminally. Maybe we need an upsurge to combat that supermarket array of options that all sound strangely familiar and superficial. Everyone seems bent on becoming a celebrity, and not saying something useful in the process necessarily, though to be fair, a few do manage, even fewer actually help, some just for the PR spin. Like I said cynical perhaps, but that's me. And it's only fair that a review should reflect a part of me as much as the musician has done in creation.
A Storm of Falling Leaves, leaves little to my imagination. Remember napalm? Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Plenty of defoliation going on then, and a storm it would have been, for sure. Poignant in its pose, so it seems to me. Almost sad in places. Nice emotional transfer perhaps? A beatiful description of a horror as semantic counterpoint maybe. Night and the Telescope, brings to mind how war is conducted from a great distance sometimes, helps with the conscientious disassociation of what's really going on, and it is also a reflection of the world into the observer. Even if at such a distance, it is still real.
Ironclad Evidence is great musically, I love the keyboard/guitar conversation, but however ironclad it may seem, iron rusts over time. Decay becomes an inherent acceptance that nothing lasts forever, especially oil. And evidence can not simply be circumstantial but a downright falsehood at times, an excuse to conduct yourself in a particular fashion. Everything is subjective, especially this review! Now, another thing I favoured in my childhood, was my kaleidoscope. No computer video games, just a simple toy that brought so much joy. This album has brought me joy, genuinely. Nice work indeed and very much enjoyed by me.
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