“This in the album where the maturity of David Wright expresses itself with some great sequencing patterns...and always those poignant arrangements”
1 Moonmaiden 7:11 2 Romancing the Moon 7:27 3 Moonlit Dream 15:34 4 Twilight Rider 3:56 5 Cry of Autumn 5:41 6 Moonlight Express 6:21 7 3 Past Midnight 4:11 8 Tunnel Vision 4:30 9 Full of Eastern Promise 5:31 10 Dancing Under Moonlight 9:25 11 Timeloop 6:26 AD Music | AD172CD
(CD/DDL 74:03) (V.F.) (Mix of England and Berlin School)
ROMANCING THE MOON is the 4th album that David Wright remixes and remasters for the needs of iTunes and of Spotify, as well as for the love and needs of his fans. Offered in a manufactured CD and in digital download, the sound remains as charming and authentic as on Reflections. We also sense here that David Wright appends quietly his claw on the scene of the English EM by inspiring it a melodious approach tinted with romanticism. And a little as on his first album, the English musician proposes a collection of nine titles filled with very poignant orchestral arrangements and with nostalgic melodious lines which constantly come to overwhelm our feelings. Moreover, if we don't sigh on the tears of the very beautiful title-track, it's maybe because we are just not there...
But before, we dance the eyes in the stars with Monnmaiden which is a kind of cosmic rumba made up of David Wright's most beautiful musical assets. The rhythm is lascivious with lines of harmonies which subdivide their airs in a more relaxing than lively approach. That sounds like the harmonies of the MIDI of the 80's. Romancing the Moon is a beautiful moment of tenderness that only David Wright (and Vangelis) is capable of offering. Layers of mists filled of iridescent particles, layers of weeping violins and breaths of absent voices caress a slow march towards the heavens putting in music by a keyboard with chords of an acoustic guitar and especially very romantic. Quiet and very wrapping! It's only after some listenings that we shall fall under the charms of Moonlit Dream. Its slow introduction is flooded of seraphic voices among which the celestial harmonies, as well as the discreet songs of panpipes, converge on a delicate ambiospherical ascent. The keyboard keys swirl as a worn carousel, wrapped up that they are by dense and luxuriant arrangements. A completely unexpected line of bass sequences shakes these soporific atmospheres a little after the bar of 5 minutes. The rhythm becomes intensely pulsatory and beats a completely excessiveness pace with a kind of spirals oscillators which go and come in minimalists loops a la Philip Glass, as running breathless to lose pace. A rather distant melody grafts its arpeggios a bit fluty which sparkle in a thick mosaic of synthesized mist. Altering a little its harmonious pattern, Moonlit Dream melts in a 3rd phase at around the 10th minute. The melody becomes then more concrete while the banks of mist intensify their poignant caresses. It's a very good title of the David Wright's repertoire. Twilight Rider is a good and very lively electronic rock with great effects of cello, or a Patrick O' Hearn bass line style, which stretches its lamentations in a completely mesmerizing way. If the rhythm is solid, the harmonies are note outdone by arpeggios which ring like a mixture of panpipes and xylophone in momentum of seraphic voices. More melancholic, Cry of Autumn flows like a continuation of thoughts lost in our ocean of memories. David Wright spreads a painting as melodious than nostalgic where teams up his breathes of Pan and the arpeggios which ring with indiscipline. And always these caresses of mist which wrap up all the seraphic movements of ROMANCING THE MOON. And I like this small bucolic melody which strolls around in the background of this musical adornment and which glitters in solo here and there. We are in the best of David Wright here.
From a music piece loaded of tenderness to a solid electronic rock, the English musician handles both brilliantly on his 2nd album. Moonlight Express chases away the melancholy of Cry of Autumn with a structure of spasmodic rhythm where a kind of train hiccups with a line of sequences which makes skip its keys like imps pressed to play their dirty tricks. The percussions bludgeon this structure of electronic rhythm with the precision of the rowers of the antiquity, creating a perfect rhythmic cradle for these delicate harmonies blown by a synth always in its mode of elegiac flute. 3 Past Midnight brings us back to melancholy with a soft night and morphic ballad which justifies its title. On a line of spasmodic rhythm, a la Chariots of Fire from Vangelis, Tunnel Vision lies down a great melody weaver of earworm with a beautiful line fed of violins which sing like the keen current of a brook under the gilts of the sun. We hear even there the reflections of the other arpeggios to sparkle. Full of Eastern Promise ended this album in those years with a good duel between percussions, bass pulsations and series of sequences among which 2 which bicker a melodious approach full of fragrances of the East. And if you have read this review from beginning to end, you doubtless understood that this album is a wonderful one that David Wright redoes with 2 bonus tracks. Composed in 1998, Dancing Under Moonlight proposes an introduction full of the essences of Full of Eastern Promise before rerouting its ambiences towards a good up-tempo of which the hopping rhythm always remains caressed by these seraphic mists. A beautiful minimalist melody decorates the static flow of the rhythm, even that a more changeable 2nd one sparkles such as a rivulet of pearled sequences. Written with Dave Massey, and 7 years later, Timeloop is even more lively, it's almost a techno, than Dancing Under Moonlight It's a kind of hymn to life, because of its very beautiful arrangements, that expresses itself rather easily on a dance floor. And the dance music of David Wright always has this little something of special which makes that we are a little hampered to say that it is humdrum
But no matter, ROMANCING THE MOON remains a great album where the abundance of arrangements can annoy those who like to badmouth on the back of this likeable English musician. I found no faults there! It's very melodious with some very good sequencing pattern. And if we place this album in its time frame, in its context it's not false to claim that it's a major work in David Wright's catalog. And this remasterised version is amply worth its reason to be, because I discovered it again and even more in-depth this really excellent album.
Sylvain Lupari (July 29th, 2016) ****½*
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