Gateway of Love – When Mountains Speak (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

When Mountains Speak  has a floating, semi-lucid quality to much of the music that emanates from its creative core, but Gateway of Love pushes this aspect further than usual. Musically, there is always a push-pull factor between structure and fluidity, and it is the tension, the interplay, the ebb and flow around which their whole sound is based. Sometimes things err to the side of musical liberty, other times to more conventional songwriting patterns. Here, it is definitely the former.

The song sits above loose drum grooves and relaxed beats, just enough to allow movement above them but also enough to tether its more wayward urges. Above this groove, the sounds wander and wash around each other, mandolin sounds are subsumed under banks of effects, haunting harmonies drift past (chants would be a fine thing, geddit?) and the whole mainly forming a cohesive, swirlin sonic body through which the occasional saxophone break cuts incisively through, or spoken word, here a reflection on the nature of love taken from the New Testament’s 13 Corinthians, is given free rein to communicate directly with the listener.

But essentially, the music should be considered one musical mass and separating one instrument from another would be akin to trying to isolate waves from the ocean that gives them form. That might suggest some sort of ambient drift, but the music is more dynamic than that, with numerous musical peaks pushing through to create structure and shape.

And it is worth also saying something about the accompanying video. Far from being just pleasing visuals, the flow and fluidity of the images should be seen as a representation of love and how it, like the music, is fever-changing, evolving, dynamic and multi-facetted, something that can’t really be described by mere words and which perhaps is best expressed by the intoxicating nature of music and the beguiling displays generated in the video.

As always, this is When Mountains Speak doing what they do best. But, as always, this is When Mountains Speak delivering something different from anything they have before. And that is the joy of the band. You sort of know what you might get, but not really. The same but different. Always different.