direct link: Moon Events
I'm guessing the last track is the later studio one... the energy shifts quite dramatically in 'Excavation Site in Sector E-4.' Yet, as with the previous three, which were created in an on-air improvisation jam session for an hour long streaming radio show, it builds its soundscape with fast sliding repetition inside long tonal waves until you are caught in the swell, part of the story, enthralled with the expedition, unable to leave until the song has ended. Mike Winchester's music is hypnotic (in track notes he is listed as composer). There is speed, excellence, command: we know where we've come from and where we're going, it's the journey that's exciting. It grips us. And what a journey! The astronaut metaphor of visiting and populating the moon in a futuristic excavation creating a 'Moon Train Station' works beautifully with this Berlin School inspired music. Within sameness, and progression, come profound insights, enlightenments. I felt comforted listening. In the peace of dynamic opposites. 'Images of Light and Dark.' Unions. In the final piece, though seeming a departure from the earlier three, the music entirely stops perhaps half way through. Silence. What are we to do with this? Has the album ended? Is there an anomaly in the moonscape? But no, the silence is music. It all comes to rest. Sound gathers in its silence. That silence, like through a glass darkly, reveals what I consider a brilliant album that I will listen to again and again as I discover more deeply who I am by listening. Thank you WMRI.
