Speak The Truth – When Mountains Speak (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

When Steven Clarkson, the man behind When Mountains Speak, sent me this trio of songs, he did add the cautionary note that these were lengthy songs and perhaps not best suited to radio. That made me smile because the exploratory and improvised, eclectic, and experimental nature of the music made, either by himself in solo mode or with others under this musical moniker, is, with all due respect, about as far away from mainstream radio fodder as you can get. And for me, at least, that is what makes it so great.

Do we need more pop chancers and indie kids looking for a shot at fame, cliched rockers, and would-be troubadours clogging up not just the airwaves but the very air we breathe? That stuff might be red meat to the wider music consumers, but only because the record labels have told them that is what you want, and who are we to argue? So, ironically, everything that makes When Mountains Speak so good is actually everything we need to make mainstream radio playlists more interesting, and simultaneously, the reason why the powers that be keep such revolutionary music at arm’s length. (Apologies to those few radical digital stations staging a fight back. I’m obviously not talking about you, and thank you for your service.)

Speak The Truth is three long and ever-evolving songs that advocate peace but do so mainly through a sort of lateral thinking approach. There are no lyrics to guide you and tell you exactly what to think, no obvious hooks to hang your thoughts on, just mercurial and fluid music that gives you time to think. These pieces, which owe as much to the scale of classical music as they do to the free forms of jazz, make you think as much about the nature of music itself and what it can be, as the intended subject at hand. But, if this makes you question something as established and fundamental as music, doesn’t it follow that you can question anything, especially something as obvious as the current status quo of war and confrontation, greed and aggression?

The opening title track is a strange beast, blending cascading and discordant guitar patterns with tabla beats and explosive and gnarly salvos that occasionally border on the sound of heavy industry with the striking of a tambourine, which, given the subject matter, seems almost like a doomsday clock counting down.

No War is more structured, thanks mainly to a consistent drum pattern that runs underneath it and contains a rare thing on a When Mountains Speak track: vocals. Admittedly, it is more the sound of a rabble-rousing agitator shouting soundbites and slogans, but it is an interesting balance to the strange sonic brew boiling away behind it.

Place of Peace continues the concept of noise as art, and indeed, all three tracks are best taken together, a soundscore to an idea rather than tracks in their own right. That idea is, as the titles suggest, one of peace—peace in our own lives, peace in our communities, peace in our countries, peace in our world.

Perhaps what is most extraordinary about this sonic triptych is not the challenging music found here but that, tens of thousands of years after man invented blades and spears with which to prey on each other, there is still the need to make art and articulations that encourage us to stop doing so!