By Luanda Myers, Music For All – Brazil
We are witnessing an admirable phenomenon that challenges the increasingly prevalent visibility of instrumental or ambient sound, with a multitude of minimalist possibilities and electronic opportunities in these conceptual proportions. This phenomenon is a relatively easy-to-explain premise…
Due to the abrupt musical acceleration of current times, coupled with an excess of information files, the listener’s relationship with music has changed considerably. A recent study confirmed that the average time a listener spends on streaming channels is thirty seconds. With the advent of the pandemic, where amidst all that chaos and isolation, people had more time to connect with music.
During this time, there has been a revival of nostalgic principles in terms of appreciation, and it is in this context that the genres mentioned above resonate with significant growth, including the constant influx of new talents. After all, in this mandatory leisure, art served as a comfort for many, not just industry professionals.
This trend turned out to be highly beneficial for those of us who have been promoting this style with a solid trajectory, as is the case with the Puerto Rican group (based in Aguada) SILVERMOUSE, which, for approximately fifteen years and with impactful records released, has been gaining great visibility from both the public and specialized critics due to its widely transgressive, avant-garde, and seductive experimental electronica.
Obviously, there was an expectation for their new undertaking, and finally, that day has come: “Beyond,” a magnificent collection of eight impeccable tracks, a selection that showcases the group’s live performances from the last five years. It’s livetronica that consists of a formidable odyssey, where from the first seconds, we are properly “abducted” into an unprecedented sensory journey, given the unleashed power and emanated force! We at the Music For All portal were extremely excited about this material and will delve into each of these tracks recorded in the band’s grand performances below…
The album starts with “Druids Rising,” where abundant synthesizers, dripping with intimate principles, reverberate highly irresistible ambient precepts. Many sounds and nuances “invade” these primal melodies, and the road’s direction descends into a growth of epic endeavors, fully blending with a progressively exploding electronic prerogative that is simply AMAZING! While waving to the dance floors with praise, it impresses with spatial cerebralness with shades of a brilliantly proclaimed SCI-FI soundtrack.
“Beyond the Dream Drum” gradually exalts a precisely hypnotic conducting paradigm, beautified with brilliant ethnic forecasts. It’s worth noting that SILVERMOUSE, in these performances, partnered with the Monroe Institute, a pioneer in the use of brainwave entrainment technology in live shows. Another reason for the unprecedented sensory journey to be duly guaranteed, especially with these signals of consciousness alteration properly instituted!
“Primrose was our Goat” as if we were in a conceptual chain, sweeps us into similar instances, but adorned with a myriad of artistic explorations that captivate through abstract tones and tribal beats, bordering on protagonism. But as we are surprised at every moment, like an out-of-control roller coaster effect, all the instruments take their place in a production with the aura of a PHENOMENAL jam session!
“Imagining” has much of an immersive psychedelic experience, in a grand psycho-spiritual atmosphere… The more expansive electronics are advancing in small steps, and we have another journey in the form of a sound experience that will NEVER be forgotten. We are definitely not the same after these tracks, so magnetic and transformative at the same time! This immersion with Monroe Sound Science, precisely tuned to the octaves of the blue frequency, is truly a unique state of consciousness.
In “Snake Grass,” it is possible in this complete immersion to feel our body levitate through instances of astral projection, wonderfully altering our altered states of perception! The delivery of this track reaches radical limits; it is possible to have that sensation of throwing oneself into space with total fearlessness.
“Lionsmane” is so careful in its enhancing principles that it literally leads us to other dimensions. The sound of the flute would make the icon Ian Anderson of the band Jethro Tull smile from ear to ear because the high-quality psychedelia is put into practice! Special mention should be made of the musicians who participated in this intriguing endeavor: Justin Handley on guitar, violin, mandolin, flute, cavaquinho, and recorder, and Joanne Hunt live producing the electronic bases.
“Tripgnosis” is a great condenser of all that we have witnessed so far, representing exactly the primal and conceptual precept of the band with their work. We are facing one of the great releases of recent times, which will inevitably be in all possible “Best of 2023” lists at the end of the year.
The primordial encore of “Brew 42” attests with an open mouth to everything that has been duly tasted, felt, perceived, and assimilated so far: it is a SENSATIONAL MASTERPIECE! It deserves to be taken to all the most remote corners of this planet!