Empty Space Orchestra - Empty Space Orchestra review

Year : 2011
Genre : Progressive Instrumental Rock
Label : Independent
Origin : United States
Rating : 9.6 / 10

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The music of Empty Space Orchestra recognizes no value dearer than its right-, its mere freedom to go anywhere, anyhow. This self titled affair is a commandingly elegant and very natural-sounding - very REAL sounding - instrumental album with huge capacities to cast a variety of top level spells on you, each having warranty to calibrate you at the core if you let them. The reason for this is none other than an ubiquitous sense of - this may sound strange at first - organized randomness, to which the band exhibits lifting faithfulness throughout.

Here is what I mean by organized randomness : Empty Space Orchestra shows superb melody-, rhythm-, and hookcraft to keep your receptors stimulated during the interstellar compositions, and the sense of incidental occurrence of these finely presented elements also is maintained by the band. Nothing is served without crystal clear thought and crystal clear emotion, and there always is a lot going on on this special spin as far as the actual ways of relevant musical development. This LP is one simple hook lasting for 50 minutes. The flow is exceptionally free and so abundantly content-rich musically even when witnessed from the most rigorous field of view of ultimate value scrutinization, that the 50 minutes this record schedules the thorough space trip for, reign far beyond the safety-need to offer a money back guarantee, and this becomes super-obvious by giving the simple act of focus to any single moment of this significant disc. There are no weak parts on this baby, and you really owe yourself to check this one out, in my opinion. Read more to - a dramatic turn of events - read more about it.


Empty Space Orchestra worships any mood any time of the day as long as it has entertainment value, and demonstrates superb sobriety by making the offered moods reveal their ultimate meaning. As noted, I personally have found no blemishes on this release, - and stopped looking for them pretty soon, too - "just" pure progression of super-exigent audio content that speaks a special kind of sci-fi music, a dialect that has equal capacity to calibrate your imagination and to immerse you into a bottomless wormhole of treasures containing fine sonic data. This album packs so much significance, despite not having a single comprehensible word sang or spoken on it, "only" the freely interpretable-, to-be-deciphered information that is created by the pitches, the timbers, the gaps, to be internally assembled and registered as the delicate purpose of this fine nervous system hack device! Furthermore : !!exclamationmark

Empty Space Orchestra is the equivalent of rampant wild space running amok on you, just to surprise you with the fact that it actually shows no interest in eradicating your existence. The album, in character, shows a peaceful stance all the way, and packs virtually no aggression or function-lacking heft for the sole sake of the brisk tempo. What I consider exceptionally nice from this album, is the following : the efficiency level of the tracks is never traded in for self-indulgent behavior, - wankery solos - and the constant serving of melodic/harmonic hooks remains the key agenda. In another review I wrote that the creators do not satisfy with "just delivering", they seek to deliver with a clear conscience. You can say the same about this album, too.

This release emerges exceptional by having zero clue about itself doing it, as it never aspired to do so at the first place. It just wanted to exigently entertain in the sonic domain - the complete lack of vocals is a "delicate" - < - irony - sign of this. This release is more significant than you currently contemplate it to be, and also is a special ticket for a special ride, and the best part of it is that you can take it numerous times, and you will want to, too. Ripe, super-focused, and hooky as hell by a hot summer day, Empty Space Orchestra is instant ear candy with immense capacities to calibrate your nervous system. Open up your ears, schmuck!

Rating : 9.6 / 10

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Peter Gabriel - New Blood review

Year : 2011
Genre : Orchestral Soft Rock
Label : Real World / Virgin
Origin : UK
Rating : 7.5 / 10

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Peter Gabriel comes out with another cover album, on which Peter Gabriel covers songs by Peter Gabriel, but, in an orchestral fashion, to make Peter Gabriel's catalog even more flamboyant than Peter Gabriel's catalog - with a 2010 orchestral self-cover LP included in it already - is.

This second symphonic burst of self-covers exactly is as exciting as the previous sentence sounded, and that excitement-factor is totally dependent on the individual. New Blood has tremendous drama / rampant self-indulgency going on - depending which direction and mood you are approaching it from and with - and one can imagine that it is as easy to like this album greatly, as is to dismiss it as a repetitious monster length with perfect symphonic background supporting the vocal lamentations of Peter Gabriel. Indeed, some singer chicks are joining in sometimes, but one's voice is pretty stock, and the other one gives me a series of successful nervous breakdowns, and none of them are able to approximate the sheer-, stable character of the sorrowful animal tamely revealed when Peter Gabriel unleashes his famous mixed voice singing skill set. One has the suspicion that Mr. Gabriel felt this album would be highly self-fixated if to contribute his own voice on it, only, and this decision to include stock singing ladies here and there, is mature, I guess. Read on to find out more about this release.


As hinted, and, with its not at all non-ambitious 77 minutes, New Blood is a super-thorough record for what it is, and also one that sounds to address the 3 types of primer moods it has over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Not much though, if anything is wrong with this scheme, because this release has no intent to rewire your approach towards Peter Gabriel. It is directed mainly for the fans of-, AND for Peter Gabriel. For them, this is exquisite material, offering a muscular angle to scrutinize this body of work from. This stimuli partly registers as a family-safe Walt Disney cartoon score, partly as a statement given to a psychotherapist, and the content always remains lush and rich, because an orchestra with such skilled musicians in it, though COULD go wrong in theory, it does not. The orchestra has totally great peak moments by which no string remains untouched and no brass remains lipless, those are very pleasant to endure.

The special edition of the LP invades your cosmic receptors with two discs, and Peter Gabriel himself must have been supremely satisfied with the work of the orchestra, because the second disc contains instrumental variants of the tracks. Without the singing, the music claims the form and tender rampancy of flawless, powerful cinema music. The same is true with Gabriel's presence on board throughout the first disc, but its function becomes much different when backing a lead up. The orchestra, paired with Gabriel's famous mixed voice gloom register, without doubt produces an intimate listening experience right from the opening minutes, and this solid, trusty, thick, risk-freely predictable sonic grasp is maintained on you all the way if you want that. Amen to that, baby!

Rating : 7.5 / 10

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