When Steven Clarkson informs me that this is ” by far my most ambitious album to date,” you have to remember that all things are relative. By that, I mean that, compared to most music makers’ love of conformity and comfort zones, almost every note and nuance, chord and construct he commits to tape is something that most people would consider ambitious, unusual, experimental, adventurous…out there! Steven’s version of “ambitious” is likely to take us to places even he hasn’t taken us before.
Two immediate factors make Namaste a more ambitious prospect in his already ambitious world. Firstly, the amount of music that makes up these two discs. More accustomed to releasing collections of, admittedly, often lengthy songs, whose tracks number in the single digits, here we have both the numerous and the extended. There is a lot of music going on here.
The second consideration is sonic. Here, he has added electric cello to his growing arsenal of instruments, often incorporating more ambient textures, with the sweeps and swoons of its bowed strings providing an excellent contrast to the more focused and precise sounds of the guitar.
From the squalling, tumbling opener, “Midnight Somewhere,” we are led through a soundscape that is still familiar yet with added sonic dimensions. “Free Expression” returns to those sonic borderlands, tabla-driven blend of East and West, the traditional and the avant garde, a sound that I always associated with When Mountains Speak, and “Mystic Ponderings” sees the cello pushed to the similar outer limit as Steven does with his guitar, with fragments and fractures of beguiling and broken piano flitting through the spaces.
The title track is a strange beast indeed, a pulsing, energized series of peaks and troughs, a purposefully peculiar, cinematic soundscape dominated by frantic, voice-like electronica and droning, sonorous backgrounds.
Namaste concludes with “Leaf Floating,” a sound of sonic shards, sharp and serrated, all folded and formed into a jagged landscape —the gnarled final destination of an otherworldly sonic journey.
Ambitious indeed, but, as I alluded to earlier, what Steven considers merely a more ambitious take on his already experimental music would be otherworldly and perhaps even unimaginable to most people’s creative minds. This might be challenging music, but challenging is the process of how things move forward; it’s how innovations and ideas change the world, it’s the force that takes us to the furthest stars and gives us a better understanding of ourselves. Challenging? Perhaps. Important? Absolutely.