ALBUM REVIEWS
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ALBUM REVIEWS |
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Steve Barnes
NEW DAY AD MUSIC 2009 @www.vanguard-online.co.uk
Sweet. And I don’t mean schweeeeet. No, this release is very saccharine. A New Age offering from AD Music, the prolific electronic music publisher, this is distributed through their New Age imprint: New World Music. One might hope New Age was a new and better world but, from the early experimental days of Eno, ECM et al, New Age has become a spiritual technology or, alternatively, music to indulge in silliness like crystal therapy and contemplating angels to whilst polishing your aura. Inspired by people like Mike Oldfield to become a one man band, Steve Barnes followed being an army bandsman with Trance music – making it and producing it – before branching out into this market. And it feels like a market, not a calling. Mike Oldfield went out on a limb with the bonkers conception of Tubular Bells but, after Hergest Ridge, became a musician, not an inventor. Steve Barnes’ music is gentle and drifting but utterly anodyne. Some would let it serve as background music but as soon as I focus on it, the lack of direction bores me. I can listen to static music (Stockhausen, Get Up On It-era Miles Davis, Gorecki, etc) but this looks like it is saying something whilst failing to. I’ve heard music made for meditation and that bugs me but less so than this, where the keyboards seem to be making melody but the melodies have no purpose, even decorative. I can’t imagine anyone buying this except for relaxation purposes and I’d say don’t waste your time, grab something meditative that has some fibre. How about solo cello suites by Bach? They relax and massage the brain while passing on some sense of the shape of the cosmos and leaving you richer for the experience. www.admusiconline.com |
