Mr Mertens has assembled 16 musicians, playing nearly exclusively acoustic instruments, on his latest offering. The musical styles developed on this disc vary from chamber rock, through to RIO-influenced forays; while traversing nearly every genre in between.
The emphasis throughout these 11 tracks appears to be on the composition as opposed to any showcasing of musical virtuosity by any one member. All tracks are well crafted numbers filled with lush melodies, where strings and horns coalesce in a harmonious musical marriage. Some tracks, such as " Broken Blossoms", have a movie score feel to them, as the song seems to be narrating a tale; in a similar vein to Camel's Snow Goose or Gryphon's Red Queen To Gryphon Three. Although primarily an instrumental disc, a couple of numbers do offer us some vocal performances. "Watchman" features some sublime male/female vocal counterparts while "Soylent Red" showcases some superb female chantings.
Although not necessarily a disc to turn the progressive community on it's ear, White Worker is a well composed, well executed record which ,once again, makes it that much more difficult to pigeonhole the excellent Carbon-7 label which rarely seems to duplicate styles in their releases while always offering the adventuresome music listener quality discs.
Track Listing:
- Belgiques (2:58)
- Out-And-Outer (4:45)
- Peppermint Lounge (2:42)
- Watchman (6:12)
- Fragile (1:41)
- Broken Blossoms (4:44)
- Explosion By Sympathy (5:13)
- Soylent Red (4:06)
- Oom Pah (5:35)
- ME (4:46)
- Epsilons (1:31)
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