As a blogger and geek, I know I’ve always supported new
music. It seems that whenever new arrivals come in between Syn-Phonic Music and
The Laser’s Edge websites, I always know when the time is ready to go ahead and
buy some music from the progressive genre both old and new. So when something
special comes in the mail for me to review or by e-mail, I know right away
it’ll be interesting and very good to hear. And when Glass Onyon’s package came
in the mail, it’s like finding Treasure in the Sierra Madre.
One of the CDs that arrived in the mail for me was Burnt
Belief. It is a duo project that started back when Bassist Colin Edwin
(Porcupine Tree) worked with Jon Durant on Dance
of the Shadow Planets and they brought everyone together to play live in
the studio and that was when the ambient project was born. The name came from a
book called When Prophecy Fails by
Leon Festinger back in the 1950s UFO Cult and in Festinger’s mind, is that the
believers when foretold an evacuation of the followers failed to materializing
as the Mayan Prophecy has been doing the rounds.
It seems like an odd name for a project, but for me, I like
where they are coming with. The sound of their music is Progressive
Ethno-Fusion with Atmospheric soundscapes. I remember reading one of their
reviews in Prog Magazine thanks to Sid Smith a few years ago when I bought Etymology and I fell in love with it.
And it was on my top 30 albums of 2014 on Music from the Other Side of the
Room. And I completely forgotten about them.
Until I recently heard their music again on an episode of
Sid Smith’s Podcasts from the Yellow Room of their new album which is their
third on the Alchemy Records label entitled, Emergent. And from the moment I put the CD on, I was completely in
awe of how it sounded. It’s eerie, electronic, and experimental at the same
time.
It feels very much as if both Durant, Edwin, and drummer
Vinny Sabatino, created a score for a dystopian science fiction film that was
done in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s with a collaborative partnership between
directors William Friedkin and Ridley Scott. The title-track and Until the Stars Go Out sees them
channeling the essence of Durant’s styles of Frippertronics, Klaus Schulze, and
David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy.
You can hear the structures of a mysterious rhythm as if
someone is creeping upon you with electronic drum beats, and eastern guitar
melodies as if it is taken place in the Sahara desert. The Confidence of Ignorance brings to mind the style of Agitation
Free’s Haunted Island from their 2nd album while Language of Movement features the
mid-tempo drum lines in a drive into the belly of the beast to search for clues
and grooving bass lines by Edwin himself.
More Snow is a
darker acoustical theme. You can imagine yourself walking through this snowy
ghost-town as imagining a pin dropped out of nowhere as the music is drawn
through middle-eastern themes, ‘80s synths, and with guitars sounding like flutes followed by percussion.
I was so blown away by Burnt Belief’s Emergent. It’s not just a great album, but I would never say a dark
album, but a spooky atmospheric yet supernatural albums that the duo have
released. I hope to hear more from them and as I’ve always said in some of
album reviews, this is the soundtrack and movie inside your head. With Emergent, it is one of them.
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