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Cover |
Release |
Style |
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2004 |
progressive rock |
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Label |
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www.telosmusic.net |
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Website |
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www.telosmusic.net |
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Contact |
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Playing Time |
Cat. N° |
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54'22" |
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Review by |
Rating |
|
Claude |
8/10 |
|
nederlands |
Review |
Cerulean Blue’ of Rain is at the least
a very remarkable cd in different ways. There is not so much
information about the man (he has some 'ambient' compositions on his
account), but it’s a fact that he plays almost all instruments, he
has written all the music and the lyrics, he has conceived the
artwork and he has also founded his own record label. And apparently
he has released a poem cord, it appears to be too much for one human
being.
The cd contains seven tracks, all of them introduced by Rob Brown,
telling in a magnificent way the story of young man Rick on his
travel through America. He’s accompanied by a string quartet and
numerous sound effects, you must have understood that this is all
about progressive rock in the vein of the seventies, ambient,
psychedelic, very melodic. References to early Genesis and Pink
Floyd seem to be obvious.
The ‘Lammas Lands’ puts the tone, dark, melodramatic, beautifully
sung, the drums gives the track some more energy. ‘Parsifal’ is
being led by an intriguing saxophone and a choir. In the excellent
‘The Silver apples of the moon’ there are a lot of Floyd elements,
but vocally it tends more towards Blackfield, which is not really a
coincidence, as this album can be compared with ‘Voyage 34’ of
Porcupine Tree, as well on a musical basis as for the concept.
Sometimes the music has a Celtic touch like in ‘Jerusalem’. Fairly
impressive is also the accompanying movie “Ashes”, with a
frightening Rob Brown, truly a charismatic guy.
Don’t expect musical-technical highlights (there are not so many
solos), soundscapes are more important in this kind of music, an
atmosphere is being created throughout the entire album, and Rain
succeeds wonderfully. Therefore, you should carefully listen to the
music (and you have no excuse not to do it, like you will read
hereafter). Just dim all the lights, switch on a candle and let the
music overwhelm you, if you are in a romantic mood, you will love
it.
TelosMusic, the label of Rain, has been founded to distribute and
promote his own music. It is very special that he has made available
the entire cd without any costs on his website, you can download all
tracks (albeit in a modest quality of 96kbps). The idea of the
artist goes as follows: ‘it is impossible to prevent people from
copying music, they have done it already for years and studies have
demonstrated that people, downloading illegally from the internet,
are buying six times more cds than the average consumer (!).
Therefore it is better to give the consumer the opportunity to let
him discover the music by means of the internet, if he likes it, he
will be prepared to buy the cd with the highest quality with all the
extras (artwork, movies, lyrics, a.o.)’. Not all the artist will
agree with him, but it is a laudable initiative. It will give a
totally different view on the distribution of music in the future.
Think about it… and in the meantime you can
download the entire cd here and decide if this music is
appealing to you. You can
buy it for only 8.5€ (incl. shipment costs)
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Musicians |
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RAIN: bass, keyboards, guitars,
jerusalem pipes, vocals, eye
Rob Brown : narration
Philip Morgan : violin
Rebecca Percy : viola
Hannah Payne : cello
Stephanie Moorey, Fleur Bray, Emma
Newman-Young : parsifal choir
Nicola Robbins, Blue Stevens, Clive
Stainton : backing vocals |
|
Tracklist |
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The Lammas Lands (8:58)
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Parsifal (6:08)
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Starcrossed (4:52)
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The silver apples of the
Moon (7:38)
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Light and Magic (10:53)
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Jerusalem (9:13)
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Cerulean Blue (6:36)
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