Heal My Rage – The Sound of Mountains (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Anyone who thinks that instrumental music has less to say than its lyrically-minded rival hasn’t listened to the right instrumental music. The problem I have, though not to the extent that it keeps me awake at night, with lyrically-driven music is that, by and large, it leads you to the one and only conclusion. The one that the artist intended. It literally tells you what the song is about, signposts exactly where it is going as you travel with it.

Instrumental music generally, and certainly that made by The Sound of Mountains, works in more mercurial, subtler, and supple ways. With only the three-word title indicating what the song is about, the listener is free to interpret the music any way they want. And so if worded songs take you by the hand and pull the listener kicking and screaming to the one point that the artist is trying to make, songs like “Heal My Rage” allow you to head off in any direction you like, guided more by your own experiences and thoughts than that of the artist. The music inspiring and evoking rather than lecturing the recipient.

So, as Christopher Morin, the man behind these lofty sonics, lays down some spacious beats and weaves around them shimmering shoegaze-infused guitar lines, builds intensity, and employs rising and raw riffs, conjuring walls of post-rock noise and until squalling anthemics have been conjured, it is up to you to decide how you feel about the music, what memories it evokes and, ultimately, what it all means.

Doesn’t that sound more rewarding than listening to some would-be troubadour moan about their recent breakup? (Of course, it might be about that, too, if you want it to be.)

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