Particles – When Mountains Speak (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Trippy. That’s how I would describe the opening, titular salvo of When Mountains Speak‘s new four-track ep. Although conventional song form has never been much of a concern for Steven Clarkson‘s fluid and florid musical vehicle, here, he breaks even further away from even his loose take on structure. He launches himself into the realm of sci-fi soundtrack. And so, this first piece feels more akin to the musical scoring that might have been found running through the background of a 50’s sci-fi TV show.

The usual free-form guitar lines are overtaken by meandering bass and the sound of Steven turning his six strings into a Theramin-like experience.

As “Unjust” follows, you realise this seems to be the tone for this latest quadratic creation. It’s the sound of someone who has been everywhere, musically speaking, still finding “new worlds and new musical civilisations,” the sound of a creative adventure “boldly going” and bravely splitting musical infinitives. (Okay, even I don’t know what I mean by that, but it sounds cool, right?)

“The Outer Banks” is space jazz, for want of a better term, Miles Davis to the power of infinity and shot into space. Saxophone salvos flit past over a ticking beat as strange quantum sonics spin and seduce; these musical quarks are both strange and charming. If jazz-rock encountered a black hole, this might be the sound of it being turned into something multi-dimensional, devoid of shape or time, form or function. It is the sound of Heisenberg being even less certain than usual, an array of sounds that we neither know where it is or where it’s going!

And once beyond the creative Outer Banks, we encounter…well, who knows, the sound of distant radio noise, the discernable chatter of alien voivces, the sound of the universe itself?

Where do you go when you have been everywhere? What do you do when you have deconstructed and rebuilt music as often as possible? How do you make music for the masses when the masses aren’t ready for this great adventure? You just strap in and shoot for the unknown…and not just the slightly unknown but the quantum unknown, where even the rules are subject to debate. For it is only here that anything can, and indeed will, happen. Particles is the sound of anything happening!

Cosmic!