Burnt Belief - Emergent

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 2^nd 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.