William Elmore - Time To Reflect
Posted Sun 3 Aug 2008 19:29 by lazarus.
William Elmore seems to be one of those rarest of beasts, a musician who makes music for all of the right reasons. Many bands and artists may pretend to have an overdeveloped sense of humble integrity, but more often than not all they really want to do is be famous and to do so are willing to write whatever the current fashion dictates to get noticed. It makes a refreshing change, therefore, to come across someone who is genuinely inspired to write about the physical world that surrounds him, seems to work pretty much on his own, doesn’t play gigs (that I am aware of), and is happy to give his music away on request.
Although William had said that he would send me a CD of his recent work, I was pleasantly surprised when four discs dropped through my letter box. These four recordings do all fall into the category of “recent” as they are the product of only the last two years, a quick look at his back catalogue does show an impressive work rate. I thought it prudent just to concentrate on one of the CDs rather than spread the review too thin. I would say however that if this one is to your taste any of the other works will probably be to your taste too. William works in a sort of new age, experimental, folk vein, largely instrumental and leaning heavily into the more ambient and chilled-out realms.
The album really starts to come alive on the second track, A Drop In The Ocean, where a clean-cut acoustic guitar is joined by warped-out echoes, mandolin and piano, to spiral up in a chaotic fashion to become a hazy, ethereal orchestra, this very much sets the pace for what’s to follow. There is, however, a lot of variation within this trippy, green-earth music he creates. The title track, for example, is heavy on the dance beats, but tempered by some phased flutes and electronic swells that ebb and flow on the edge of earshot. And so it goes, When Angels Fall, is an ambient chill out zone, Mother Earth is an almost votive, hypnotic, tribal prayer and Karma Kingdom is pure electronica.
The titles give away everything about the inspiration behind the works, unashamedly green, if not overtly pagan, reflective, otherworldly and of the spirit rather than of the physical. Production is low-fi, but as I said earlier, that’s not the point of the music anyway, and also accounts for the ability to release so much music in quick succession. It’s nice to meet someone who is truly inspired by a world we have lost, someone who in a small way brings it alive again through his music. Forget all those middle class weekend druids and those teenage witches who gained all of their understanding from boxed sets of Buffy and Angel. If you want to get in touch with the ancients and more in tune with the natural world, the William may just be some sort of mystical travel agent and Time To Reflect is the passport to a more mystical place.
Comments (1)
You need to be logged in to post a comment.
