| At long last |
[May. 25th, 2005|09:39 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  awake | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Transalpine-Jeffrey Radcliffe-Travelog | ] |
I said I'd talk about Jeffrey's Travelog in more detail but it took a few sessions of sitting and listening to be clearer on what I wanted to say. Let me preface this by saying I'd make an 'orrible music critic, and my musical education is all my own fault. With that said, my overall impression of the album is that it does convey a sense of motion and it is well constructed. I am a bit of an album fetishist - I am unable to buy just one track, and I like my albums to be composed rather than just thrown together in whatever order the record company thought - and Travelog meets that desire.
Now my impressions of the tracks. I do want to say that these are purely impressions and that I attach narrative to everydamnthing so you shouldn't read artistic intent into these, it's all audience inference.
Whither - This starts off sounding like a wind tunnel to me, then layered rhythms enter the scene- snare drum sounding? There's a definite feeling of forward motion, and a hidden metallic sounding melody behind the rhythms moving in and out. The wind tunnel sound comes and goes. Perhaps we're on a mountain highway moving in and out of tunnels, road rolling along beneath.
Dream Flight of Atalanta- This track has lovely gentle pacing. It's one of my favourites on the album. There's a warm, low pitched background with a slow-motion feel. High pitched chimes sound like the golden apples falling. The track has a swelling up, warm orchestral sounding middleground. It feels nostalgic but not regretful to me.
Transalpine has a light feeling - not floaty or dreamy but not dramatic or menacing. The rhythm is bright and lively. Something sounds like a piano and there's a metallic touch -bamboo and silver - bouncing around, chiming... airborne - pulsing with increasing complexity and depth.
Roto is not one of my favourite tracks but it's a lot of fun. It is full of energy. It bounces around in zig-zags -a maze of notes and of passages of notes, one layer fading out as another fades in.
Landscape is dreamy, floaty, soft, I can get lost in it. Wandering through the mists as morning breezes play about, whispering, susurration. Pan could be just around the corner, or a nymph by a pool waiting for a shepherd. Something is just out of reach, tantalizing.
Evening Song brought up one of our exciting authenticity discussions again. I can't believe it's not a guitarist. The composition is just lovely, the scope and range of what can be done in electronic music startling. It provides a good transitional point in the album. It is not laboured, but straddles between the melancholy and the bright. It's very delicate sounding.
I feel a railroad rhythm building in You Are An. A lot of this track is constructed from slightly menacing layers of simple piano melodies that slide together. The intensity of the piece builds as railroad rhythm static sounds fade in and out, sometimes growing quite dominant. This track reminds me of a Hitchcock film. It's somewhat slow paced but neither leisurely nor peaceful. It is beautiful but disquieting. This may be my favourite track on the album.
Et Tu is quite jangly, with pops and crackles and discordant sounding notes. It's an anxious, restless dream. This track sounds to me like it draws inspiration from some of the less technically sophisticated electronic of the early to mid 80s, it's a nice sound.
Cisalpine combines deep metallic sounds, not like a sounding gong but flattened sounding - like hammering on a sheet of brass, with the warmth and purple hues of an organ. This piece creeps up on me. It doesn't quite feel like it arrives anywhere, so much as lurks along, melancholy and threatening. It is follows Et Tu very well.
Twisty Passages breaks the tension built up by the previous three tracks. It's practically danceable. It has a light, frothy rhythm with sparkling sound to it. It's quite fast paced and has all the twists and turns scribbling along through it as promised by the title.
I can't say why I like the slower pieces best but I do. Lament feels like a farewell. It's slow and atmospheric. It's lulling but exotic, a craft drifting far from its home port. I can feel a sighing and shuddering like something breathing slowly in its sleep.
Good album. And that's my run down of what's on it, from my perspective. |
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| Comments: |
I need to get this album. :) Soon . . . soon . . . I hope they're not sold out by the time I have money to do so. It sounds like a wonderful album to write to.
And you did a fine job describing it. I especially loved " . . . warmth and purple hues of an organ." :)
I'm not sure I should have read this , cos now the music won't be quite so unexpected ...I do love hearing something I've never heard ebfore, and then playing it enough times that I feeel I've always known it.
On the other hand, I can compare, and say things like 'nothing like a purple organ, stuff and nonsense!' | |
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