Center of Infinity – When Mountains Speak (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

If all music takes you on a journey, then the music of When Mountains Speak is the soundtrack to a journey that will take you beyond this world. If the best music gives you something to think about, then this is music that feels like the lost teachings of a long-forgotten pantheon of Eastern deities. If the boundaries and borders of what music is are to be pushed and even broken, this is the sound of the journey beyond form and structure that ignores such tried and tested norms as verse and chorus, the sound of potential being grabbed and possibility explored. This, in short, is the sound of a musician boldly going…we are not sure where he is going. And that is what makes things so exciting.

That said, the first track that we encounter is positively groove-based. It occasionally wanders off the beat into marvellous tangents—percussive rhythms, eastern-flavoured chants, strange spirals of sound—but always seems to find its way back to the direction of travel.

The title track is where things get heavy. Initial salvos of guitar coalesce into cavernous walls of noise; industrial sonics shot through with demented digital discords and sci-fi guitar lines.

Peace is Free returns us to a familiar place, if there is such a thing in the world of When Mountains Speak, that of the free associations, free sounds, and free jams that remind us of the likes of Ornette Coleman. And whereas he was using his avant-garde to blow apart the jazz world through a mixture of progression and experimentation, ridicule, and sonic satire, Steven Clarkson opens similar doors and points in similar new directions for the rock world. (Although I get the feeling that his mission has more to do with self-development and fun than anything as zealous as trying to bring change. If I’m wrong, he’s playing things perfectly; no one suspects a thing, sir!)

Earth is a cascade of tumbling chords, lateral thinking pianos, and soaring saxophones, put to a beat of percussive chimes and blocks and full kit beats, but it is Kermit with a Dime Bag that ends things in style. Heavy on the beat, graciously groovy, pianos chime, providing, for the most part, the stable platform for everything else to dance over, guitars run riot, and that rarest of things happen for a WMS track….vocals! Vocals used as a sonic exclaimation mark, but vocals nonetheless.

If this were a few years ago, before I had become au fait with Steven’s ways and become familiar with the music of When Mountains Speak, I would say that this is a strange album. And I suppose it still is, but it is strange in a constructive, forward-thinking, untethered, rule-breaking and progressive way. And all of that makes this album and the music Steven makes as a whole, not only interesting but important, not only eclectic but inspirational.