Ayres, Marvin: Harmogram Suite

Marvin Ayres is a UK composer/producer/musician who has worked with a diverse range of artists including Simply Red, Adam Ant, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Prefab Sprout. He is known for his electronic sounding string arrangements made exclusively with organic instruments such as violin, cello and violas.

Harmogram Suite consists of six movements with ambient/electronic music being the predominant style. This is a mellow disc but if you appreciate minimalist sounds along the lines of Eno's ambient works you should find this to your liking. The recording is lush and quite droning at times and was created by overdubbing 140 layers of sound. There is no doubting the talent here and Ayres is an accomplished musician as his string work is very well done however I did find this to be a little on the mellow side. Most of the tunes build slowly, especially "Movement One – Overture" and are quite similar to one another. The best parts are the strings which are quite beautiful in places, like the somber cello and violin in "Movement Two".

The package also contains a bonus DVD which includes all six movements recorded in dts 5.1 Surround. I must say the sound is stunning so if you have a decent audio system this album will certainly do it justice.

So for me a mixed bag. I appreciate what Ayres accomplished here and the sounds are immaculately recorded but for me there was not enough to garner my full attention. Of course if you are a fan of ambient recordings you should definitely see what this is all about.

Track listing:
1. Movement One – Underture
2. Movement Two
3. Movement Three
4. Movement Four
5. Movement Five
6. Lament

Added: November 20th 2012
Reviewer: Jon Neudorf
Score:
Related Link: Artist's Official Site
Hits: 1749
Language: english

[ Printer Friendly Page ]
[ Send to a Friend ]