“We are Infinite is a quiet album filled of sensibility and by a lot of emotionalism but also dark and very melancholic”
1 The Universe Revealed and we Wept 2:31
2 The Truth, Magnificent Upon our Weary Shoulders 3:44
3 Memories Fade, Dreams Recursive 4:58
4 Horizon on the Shore Eternal 5:32
5 The Unknowing will Set you Free 2:48
6 We are Infinite 5:24
7 Requiem 5:02
8 The Photograph Hangs on the Mirror, and I Miss You 4:28
9 The Rain will Fall| 4:54
10 Mandala 6:42
(DDL 46:07) (V.F.)
(Ambient meditative New Age)
Ah Internet! … Facebook, Bandcamp, CD Baby, ITunes, etc. … All platforms which allow, and encourage, a more wide selection for the consumers and a bigger freedom for the artists, the musicians. Neil Gardner is a very known on the social networks. He is behind the ambient music Facebook page while being a composer very appreciated for his ambient music fills by strong cinematographic aromas. WE ARE INFINITE is his 6th solo album and presents a dark, melancholic music which is a little similar with the beginning of Forrest Fang's career and mostly with Harold Budd's meditative music and acoustic approaches.
We are going to the discovery of Neal Gardner's musical world with The Universe Revealed and we Wept; a delicate oneiric melody which makes sing its fragile fluty chords in the stitches of a delicate hatched structure of which the soft jolts answer to the outlines of felted percussions. The beauty of the album lies in the elegies of its piano of which each and every note penetrates tone by tone the wall of our indifference. If this piano maybe downright austere and sinister, as in the very beautiful Requiem, it can also be very melancholic, like in The Truth, Magnificent Upon our Weary Shoulders, where it draws the frame of a sweet night-romance. The somber acoustic melody hangs onto the hearing, just like with The Photograph Hangs on the Mirror, and I Miss You and its moving sonic duel guitar/piano. This is very beautiful and each of the notes has the gift to make shiver the soul. And is to say about Horizon on the Shore Eternal? Its black piano is soaked of nostalgia and scatters its melancholic notes into some iridescent mists. It's the kind of melody that accompanies a broken heart on the ice floes of his solitude. It's as much disturbing as that may be that beautiful. And we could say the same thing about The Unknowing will Set you Free.
Memories Fade, Dreams Recursive plunges us into this soft whirlwind of a silky rhythm with a fascinating sound ballerina where every chord is hammered with sharpness and acuteness. One would say a symphonic ballad for children's stories. We are Infinite is a very ethereal piece of ambiospherical music where the synth lines outline the voices of a celestial choir which fights with its devils. The Rain will Fall sounds out of tune in this deep mourning mood where the spleen reigns as an insatiate mistress. The structure of rhythm marries a fascinating down-tempo which gallops in circles around a myriad of chords of which the harmonies are drawing some furtive moments of happiness. Mandala closes this initiation into Neal Gardner's universe with a soft pulsating bass line of which the pulsations paint a somber procession accompanied by strange harmonious breaths. Intimidated arpeggios dance over the waveforms of those minimalist pulsations, entailing Mandala in its continual delicate morphic spiral.
This WE ARE INFINITE from Neal Gardner is indeed a very beautiful album. A quiet one filled of sensibility and with a lot of emotionalism but also dark and very melancholic. Those who love the kind of meditative piano, whom is the ideal companion of our solo walks, will be delighted by this album to black's perfumes which deserves amply its place in an IPod beside Harold Budd, Forrset Fang, Darshan Ambient and even of these first works from Vangelis which titillated constantly any sort of nostalgia.
Sylvain Lupari (October 26th, 2013) ***½**
Available at Neal Gardner Bandcamp
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