“Catchy melodious themes, deeply invading arrangements and his way of toying with the different styles of the 80's; Reflections was the ideal kicker to start David Wright's career”
1 Don't Look Back! 4:18 2 Romance 10:13 3 January '89 5:13 4 Song for Tricia 5:12 5 Abintra (A Love Song) 4:52 6 Seashores 17:47 7 Reflections 2:32 8 Song for Life 7:08 9 Arela 4:49 10 Another Life 8:41 AD Music | AD171CD
(CD 70:58) (VF) (Melodious, ambient, New Age)
David Wright is an English musician active in the field of EM since the late 80's. He is also the man behind the creation of the label AD Music. The label's main asset, he has also managed to bring important artists such as Code Indigo and Robert Fox, in addition to a dozen names that will enrich its catalog with surprising albums whose styles always flirt with this vision of a more accessible EM, like New Age or electronic rock. But before, there was once a musician who ... It's to Klaus D. Mueller, current manager of Klaus Schulze and former manager of Manuel Gottsching, we owe the discovery and the outbreak of David Wright. In 1989, the English composer and synthesist produced his first cassette, REFLECTIONS, which he sent to Mueller. Impressed, the latter distributed it with the POEM label. He also said about it that of all the demos he has received, it was the only one he loved, and still loves, saying the music had a soul and a lot of emotion like most works by Schulze. POEM will be distributing Wright's works until 1994. In 2001, AD Music makes the recording alive again with an edition remastered from the original tapes. REFLECTIONS is now available in downloadable format on the AD Music website and on Spotify, like most albums of the English label.
A good bass line adopts a jerky rhythm which is accompanied by a good drum hammering a powerful tempo. Don't Look Back opens REFLECTIONS with force. The atmosphere is boosted with keyboard chords falling heavily and overflown by a synth that whistles an intense melodious line. A dynamic title that surely influenced Christian Richet on his Overture album. After this heavy sequenced ride, Romance transports us into the romancing territories of David Wright. It's a long atmospheric track slightly tinged of a New Age approach where hesitant arpeggios float in an enveloping cloud of mellotron. After an intro marked by uncertainty, the notes with the delicate hues of a chimerical harp are flowing among the soft breaths of a harmonica and of angelic choruses lost in desert mists. It's very beautiful and very moving and it can only inspire dreams. After an opening full of haze, January '89 starts on a static rhythm pounded by impromptu sequences and percussions, while being besieged by bits of melodies with Asian tendencies. Disconcerting and powerful at the level of percussive elements, it's like hearing Phil Collins going wild on an oriental rhyme. Song for 'Tricia is a beautiful electronic ballad with a zest of synth pop. The synth is in mode pan flute and roams with harmony on good strikes of percussions, structuring a catchy tempo, and very good layers of a synth that exploits the stringed instruments. Abintra (A love Song) is another good electronic ballad, less lively than Song for 'Tricia, with a guitar sound to the limits of Mexican gallantry serenading under a synth with fluty breezes of mist. Seashores is another long atmospheric river with notes of guitars filled by the fragrances of a harp floating in an ambient universe. Samplings of wave and of foam sea can be heard. The synth is soft and orchestral with its celestial choirs which undoubtedly inspired Raphael on the seductive Music to Disappear in. The title track ends this first album of David Wright with a lullaby that has the same atmospheric sweetness found on Seashores.
It's interesting to hear this first work of David Wright some 15 years later. REFLECTIONS shows the great versatility of the English musician who already excel in orchestrations. This first album also contains some jewels of ingenuity in the arrangements and turn of his compositions, he is an excellent composer, and is a real portfolio of his impressive career to be. An album that I still listen with pleasure today. Click on the cover to discover it on Spotify.
Sylvain Lupari (July 25th, 2016) ***½**
Available at AD Music