Near-Life Experience by Kevin Bartlett
Backroads Music picks as one of the Top 5 albums That Matter Most for 2003
Musical Starstreams #6 of Top 20 releases for 2003
Echoes Staff Picks Near-Life Experience #18 of Top 25 for 2003
Over 70 mi [+]Near-Life Experience by Kevin Bartlett
Backroads Music picks as one of the Top 5 albums That Matter Most for 2003
Musical Starstreams #6 of Top 20 releases for 2003
Echoes Staff Picks Near-Life Experience #18 of Top 25 for 2003
Over 70 minutes of the most cinematic electro/symphonic music you'll hear anywhere. Evoking the styles of Enigma, Mike Oldfield and Patrick O'Hearn, these Sci-Fi soundscapes, other - worldly , emotionally charged Tone Poems and Celtic Symphonica are the 21st Century Soundtrack for the movie in your head. Dust off your headphones and watch your mind.
Near-Life Experience
by Robert Lovejoy rlovejoy@comcast.net
Rating: 10
I have had the good fortune to have heard Kevin Bartlett's new and unusual
album "Near Life Experience".
The album is amazing on several counts. First and foremost, the music.
Kevin's album is divided into ten songs but plays cohesively. The first
thing I thought of upon first listening was the orchestral music of the
Romantic period, albeit with a broader swath of timbres and tonal palettes
then were available to composers of that era. On this album you hear
evocations of woodwinds, didgeridoos, orchestral strings and rock bands.
Add to the mix some astonishing ambiance, and you have a recording with
quite possibly the most fascinating musical colors ever..
Beyond the tonal palette are the musical structures Kevin has crafted.
You'll hear a smattering of atonal sounds, one or two stretches of
straightforward tonic or root/fifth ostinato, some very cool rock
progressions, and some extremely complex heavily composed music, all of it
quite breathtaking.
Throughout the album, there are stretches of voices. Whispering, echoing,
announcing, incanting voices swathed in echo and reverb. It's a motif that
ties the album into a cohesive whole. There is also some fine singing now
and then by a female singer who sounds classically trained. Most of the
album, however, is instrumental, and it is startling to realize that Kevin
is playing all (or at least most!) of them. As my wife listened with me,
she noted that it must be incredible having that many things going on in
your head. I've always been impressed by Mike Oldfield's solo works, but
here we come to the tonal palette a
|
 |
Genre/Tags: 
Ringtones
Full Tracks
