As you navigate the perceptible soundscapes of Rees111’s Tanden, various philosophical questions are raised in your head. Questions, mainly relate to where music and melody end and art and noise start. Rees111’s drifting, ambient drone sounds sit on the cusp of conventional music and the search for what comes next, a quest for what lies beyond, beyond tradition, beyond form and function, beyond structure. And who is to say that too is not music? Not I!
Across seven tracks, he paints pictures with the lightest of musical hues, often so subtly that they are absorbed into the background noise of life, the universe…and everything!
The music is soothing, meditative, and, at times, barely more than a feeling, a mood, an atmosphere. It might not be everyone’s definition of what music actually is, especially if your idea of music is locked into more mainstream conventions and conformity, but it is the most thought-provoking album I have heard in a long time. I mean, when was the last time an album of music questioned its own existence?
