It is difficult to know whether When Mountains Speak makes short albums or long tracks, planned musical outings or slowly unravelling sonic journeys. What isn’t in doubt though, is that you get good value for money, and I don’t just mean that as in the length of the piece, but as in where it goes too. An Offering: An Electric Journey of Abstract Sonic Landscapes, is both highly adventurous and wonderfully ambient, exploring the new instrumental territory and tipping a hat to modern, avant-garde classical composers and cinematic soundscapes, psychedelic electronic music makers and Asian beatmakers alike.
The progressions are gentle and fluid, the song goes through only gradual evolutions and you won’t find anything as obvious as conventional structures, or if there are, it is fair to say it’s all verse…or more likely solo.
And like From Beyond Comes Within, before it, the music seems to drone and resonate, a blend of dark deliciousness and trippy, acid-laced meditations. It is about hypnotics rather than harmonies, mood over melodics, though that isn’t to say that there isn’t a strange, beguiling beauty at the heart of the music but mainstream this is not.
But, that said, the best things, the things that truly make a difference aren’t found in the mainstream. Accessibility is fine but depth is better. Grooves are easy to fire off but grace is an altogether more subtle art. Conventions are easy to follow, but the music that When Mountains Speak makes is more about leading than following, creating rather than copying, even if it takes that creativity downs some strange musical rabbit holes. But then again, why would you want to be anywhere else?
[…] previous reviews will testify, When Mountains Speak doesn’t so much make music in the conventional sense but something that might perhaps be […]
[…] Without vocals to guide those who need to be taken gently by the hand, the soaring and swooning, soothing and serenading of the instrument takes the voice’s place. Sometimes as challenging as the soundscapes that it flows through, at others charming and accessible. But such has always been the changeable nature of When Mountains Speak. […]