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As ever, I need to preface this review with some background information. I'm a classically trained musician, steeped in the 'traditional' classical music, with a particular regard for the great baroque composers. The majority of 'Modern Composition' music, Cage, Stockhausen etc. leaves me cold. I regard most of the modern era classical composition as squeaky door music, clever for the sake of cleverness with little attention to acheiving anything other than intellectual acknowledgement from the clique .
Loren Digorgio has shaken off some of my inverted snobbery, but there's still a way to go.
So when I first came across The Higher Earth, it was with suspicion, and bias.
Boy was I wrong.
First listen through the track, hmmm, interesting, what's going on here.
Second listen, hmm, there's something wrong here, I'm kinda liking this.
Third listen, oh no, what am I going to do with my prejudice, this is brilliant.
The piece starts with a few bars of dynamic flurries of discordant chords and runs, then breaks into 2 bars of melodic playing, this is repeated pretty much throughout the piece.
Almost get a sense that this could be 2 separate pieces spliced together, one modern, one traditional.
Towards the end there is some tweaking of the speed of the performance, which I find rather disconcerting, as it makes a transition from a brilliant organic and accoustic piece to an electronic piece of wizardry, however, the more I listen to it, the more it makes sense as a fitting climax.
The playing is superb, the attention to dynamics, and the beauty of some of the bars is wonderful, and there is a subconcious rhythm and timing about the entire piece which just works perfectly.
The melodic sections put me in mind of Faure or Poullenc, in their freshness and vitality. The composer has done a wonderful job of seamlessly joining discordant and harmonic music, and on the whole, the piece works it's magic on my mind.
I am left feeling as though a little door has been opened in my mind, and I am grateful for that.
The big problem this track has is that most people won't give it the time of day, won't listen past the first few bars.
I would encourage all the musicians reading this to listen to the piece, then listen again, then listen again, and I'd lay odds that while you may not rave about it, you will certainly be intrigued, and pleasantly surprised, after all, a lot of the pleasures of life are an accquired taste.
Big thumbs up to Paulo Alex A. Silva, for daring to step out of the comfort zone, and create some splendid aural landscapes.
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