Trey Gunn is one of those indefatigable musical geniuses that adorn the contemporary rock scene. His musicianship and music-making are top-notch. He played with King Crimson for over a decade and is now involved in a number of other projects: there is percussion-duo TU with Pat Mastelotto (also ex-King Crimson); the KTU trio with Kimmo Pohjonen on accordion and vocals; as well as a quintet called UKZ and a multimedia musical storytelling project (Quodia). This particular project, Music for Pictures, is meant to be a tweaking, re-orchestration and re-manipulation from Trey's extensive body of scoring work for film and television. It is issued under his own name, although the music features collaborations with several percussionists (including Pat Mastelotto) and vocalist Beth Quinn, who does incantations on a couple of the compositions.
As you might expect from Trey the music is closer to Brian Eno than it is to that of Hollywood's pictures! However, some compositions are so short that there is no time to develop the melody and many feel more like sound experimentation than musical compositions. Other artists also produce albums of this nature: for instance, another indefatigable contemporary musician, Steve Wilson - Porcupine Tree, No-Man, Blackfield - has a project called Bass Communion that produces what I call sound experimentation.
It isn't just the duration of the piece that determines its structure or feel, of course. "The Ghosts Listen" is 21 minutes long and you might expect a "traditional" composition but the piece is, in fact, based on variations of one, rather amazing, sound that presumably Trey has produced by stroking or bowing the strings of one of his fretless guitars - not quite sure how he's done it, the "attack" of the individual notes is quite pronounced with a very long, sometimes extremely long, decay - whichever way he's done it the sounds are very effective. It's an extraordinary piece and absorbing to listen to even if it's devoid of significant traditional melodic or rhythmic elements. Trey calls this piece "...the complete disassembling of sound, itself, into shattered sonic fissures"!! I'm in two minds as to whether I would enjoy watching the pictures that (will eventually?) go along with this piece.
Trey is famous for being one of the prime exponents of the Warr 10-string touch guitar and he uses that on this album as well as some fretless ones. The playing is rather gorgeous to listen to at times, although it is a pity that the music isn't allowed to develop more. I struggled to put mental images onto some of these compositions: interestingly, on his MySpace page, Trey has invited film makers to develop pictures to go with the music - this goes against what I'd imagined, that Trey had set the sounds and music against pre-existing pictures. In fairness, I think he's probably done a bit of both. The incantations on "The Silver Bough" and "Isle of the Blest" bring the emotion and color of the human voice to the proceedings and both are welcome additions to this collection.
A frustration of an album like this is that only the sonic element is provided. It is quite evident that these compositions are meant to be enjoyed in combination with images: why not then issue the whole thing with the appropriate videos? As it is, it is unlikely that many people would want to listen to it more than the once in its entirety, perhaps culling the best bits for their mp3s, or occasionally to impress their friends with the amazing "The Ghosts Listen". Unfortunately, the rating has to be given for the album as a whole.
Track Listing
1) Field Raiders (1:12)
2) The Magnificent Jinn (3:24)
3) Bridge Over a Red Sky (1:25)
4) The Fifth Spin of the Sun (2:02)
5) Capturing the Beam (1:29)
6) West of the Electric Wire (1:07)
7) Forest of Sighs (2:17)
8) The Silver Bough (1:35)
9) The Final Circle of paradise (1:11)
10) Corn Thief (1:15)
11) Night Blossom (1:44)
12) Forests of Stone (1:45)
13) Hovering the Dry Sea (1:29)
14) Corn of the Heart (0:54)
15) Cigarette oin a Cornfield (1:08)
16) Hari's Dream (0:50)
17) Cabbage Eared Boy (1:06)
18) Isle of the Blest (1:57)
19) Secondary Strike (2:00)
20) Nausicaa (3:27)
21) The Shattered Forests of Glass (0:59)
22) The Mermen (1:05)
23) Hammerhead (0:46)
24) Laddered and Runged (1:10)
25) Spirit of Flight (2:41)
26) That unmistakeable Likeness (2:01)
27) The Solarists (1:00)
28) Training to the Roadside Picnic (2:17)
29) The Ghosts Listen (21:00)
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