|
Robert Rich
Rich is cultivating a seamless blend of body music with Seven Veils. Merging physical, conceptual an mystical elements the music strives for ecstasy while staying grounded in a Irish sell sensuality. By incorporating riot regurgitating, the vocabularies of nonwestern music and traditional truths in his original fashion, Robert Rich's Seven Veils is it balance of body music in which we find honesty and ecstasy. Review by Ben Kettlewell information: |
 BACK TO REVIEW DIRECTORY |
          
|
After
several listening sessions, I believe this is the most
demanding album project of Robert Rich's career. Enhancing
the atmosphere of Seven Veils, Rich incorporates keyboards,
steel guitar, flutes, and the ever present primal drums.
This album captures Robert at the height of his prestigious
career. In terms of sheer emotional power and mesmerizing
ambiance's, this new offering would be hard to beat. Seven
Veils, like its title is artfully woven in layers of musical
and metaphysical and mysteries, and each time it is heard,
more can be uncovered. Rich's chosen focus as a composer is
sound driven by his intense response to music from Middle
and Far Eastern cultures and its many expressions of musical
tradition, its well its his "perception of awe for the
Universe ... and how small we are" as bits of living matter
in the Pent dish called Earth. The seven-track release
reflects Rich's interest in nonwestern must( and those
elements find their wily into his work. Particularly
infected by North African/Egyptian trance Persian, North
Indian classical and Indonesian gamelan music, Rich wanted
to utilize himself "as a crucible to melt together these
influences into something thin feels personal." Seven Veils
conveys Middle Eastern music's 's ecstatic element open to
the honest ecstasy within itself, and in resultant tonal '
magic that enthralls so many Western listeners, "Unlike a
lot of Western adaptations of non Western music," adds Rich,
"I am adopting musical vocabularies undigested but absorbing
them and trying to make them into my own voice 'Seven Veils
can be heard its an expression of an individual searching
for truth, and not a pastiche he recognized as it bunch of
other cultures' music. Rich "wanted every note to be
honest-- obvious references to established ethnic styles.
With collaborators DAVID TORN on guitar, HANS CHRISTIAN (who
also records with Robert's group, Amoeba) playing cello,
FORREST Fang's gypsy violin, MARK Forry's Balkan kaval and
the fretless bass of ANDREW McGOWAN, Rich mixes in his own
keyboards, steel guitar, flutes, and the prevalent drums,
which serve as the heartbeat amid the flow, of Seven Veils.
Rich's production is pristine, making this art
audiophile-quality recording, allowing the listener to
differentiate between each acoustic and electronic element,
yet feel enveloped by the "warm and inviting whole.