Okay, I have had this track under the pen before, only about four or five months ago. However, now it returns accompanied by an intriguing video, and a visual component can often add significantly to the experience, especially when the music is as challenging and dynamic as it is with When Mountains Speak.
Here, the band is found in trio form, with Jim and Ben on bass and drums, respectively, joining core member, cosmic explorer, and guitarist Steven Clarkson. It is the spontaneity of this in-the-moment jam form that adds so much to the exploratory nature of the music.
“Cosmic Handshake” finds the band in their favoured space, the one that lays between the structures of conformity and music tradition and the “anything goes” of the avant-garde, sometimes finding more recognisable form and continuity, other times heading out on a sonic limb to capture and explore potential and possibility.
The bass is often the more prominent instrument, driving the track and ever-present, though never dominating. And with this anchor in place, as wandering and wonderful as it often is, it means that the other instruments have the freedom to push their sound. Not only is Steven’s guitar able to zone in and out, delivering motifs rather than riffs, shards of music, six-string stabs and spirals which deliver their sonic statement and move on to the next idea, but Ben’s drums have the space to change their patterns at will, less playing the usual role of anchor and more a beat tapestry whose design shifts through various colors and hues, beguiling shapes and irregular weaves. Like all designs, it doesn’t pay to examine these weaves close up, but enjoy them as an overall component. Do that, and they perfectly make sense.
And as you focus in on the mandala like images spiralling before you, as the music pulses and spins, it isn’t hard to find yourself drawn into the bigger picture, the one of universal unity across religion and race, color and creed, gender and generation, the ethic and message that has, to some degree, always been at the heart of the music that When Mountains Speak makes.
Here, we have a band that doesn’t provide answers, only more questions. They don’t show you the way; they only remind you that there are so many paths, yet all those paths eventually lead you to a more enlightened place, provided you are prepared to walk them far enough. And surely, questioning, exploration, and adventure are the only ways that we can get close to finding out what the meaning of life, our own individual life, at least, actually is.
