Label: unsigned

Producer: Mike De Filette

Release Date: 2005

I was at a second hand music store yesterday when I picked up Stratosfear by Tangerine Dream, Platinum by Mike Oldfield, and Rendezvous by Jean Michel Jarre.. I was going to have an electronic feast for the weekend and I was in my element... all three CDs were in mint condition and cost only $8 each! A little later in the evening, I had some work to do for R Cat that included a scheduled review of Mike D's 'Through my eyes' described in Mike's press kit as 'Exquisite, subtle, timeless, intimate, organic, and melancholic.'

After listening to this magnficently composed and produced superior recording, I decided to wait a little longer before I played the three nostalgia items I'd bought earlier so that I could concentrate on Mike's review and on engaging my full attention on the music that brought my senses to a complete standstill while my heart and soul fastened their seatbelts for the ride of their life!

The album opens with the utterly fantastic and aptly titled Awakening - a sincerely beautiful composition with reflections of Vangelis when he was it his absolute best but with more Mike D than anything else mastering the event in a way that made me realise that the rest of this album was going to be an absolute joy to review!

After Awakening comes the undeniably brilliant Sunday Morning - the confirmation of the man's keyboard and compositional wizardry expressed no doubt with bright and colourful and romantic and unforgetable Sunday mornings in mind. The keyboard work is stunning and the production is absolutely spellbinding in this classically contemporary piece of fine audio art. What follows is the vividly emmotionally charged Goodbye - an exploration into the very heart of farewells and sad memories captured magnificently in equally emmotionally charged piano and synth pieces. Goodbye is one of the best pieces of music I have heard this year and Mike's perceptions and inspirations for this piece must have hurt at the very least for being so painfully honest yet optimistic.

Echoes engages that part of our psyche where dreams are seeded, nurtured and given space to bloom. The arrnegement is solid, stable and unique and would make a superb contribution to any film score that reflected growth and harmony in the film sequences. Watch out for the bass and percussion arrival near the three minute mark... transforming into something wildly magical and heart harvesting!

Frozen Pool is the unscheduled excursion into the realm of instrumental excellence that you might have imagined being introduced to at a convention for legendary soundscape composers. Mike has an amazing talent for sound engineering and production and for making unique arrangements all the more vibrant and colourful. Darkness meanwhile pulls us aside and reminds us that there is in fact a haunting side to our soundscaped visions made all the more real with stunning sweeps and pads that Mike controls with skill and ingenuity. An amazing voyage indeed!

Dendrobate is something to do with poison dart frogs I think, but the only poison present here is the kind you'd pay big bucks to be injected with on a daily basis! The sequenced rhythms and keyboard meanderings are enchanting and soul harnessing as they wander off into the distance leaving you with a sense of loss for a moment or two before the magnificent Zen arrives with it's grand piano opening and the piano playing on this album folks is absolutely GRAND in every conceivable manner. This is exactly the kind of music I was hoping to find in yesterday's CD search but it's a rare item these days and Mike has a way of making things seem incredibly reachable yet unreachable at the same time.. such is the skill and level of accomplishement that the man has to live with on a daily basis!

Misty Forest can do things to your senses that you were convinced your senses never knew about! Deep resonating tones open the track up in a rather mystical fashion while your left wondering about what's coming next. That's what I mean when I say 'enchanting' becasue right now folks.. I am enchanted! As we move on from the toll of the bass blanketed bells, the piece graduates into a kind of exacting solitude whihc is where you are left standing only to be run over by the incredible The Mover - a completely amazing piece equipped with enough fx inserts and percussive paces to keep you a little beynd the horizons you expected to find. I like Mike's approach here.. startling, aquiescent, thought provoking, brilliant!

Through my eyes materializes like a post industrial new age landscape right before the speakers at a point where you'd least expect to find such decisive soundscaping. Having almost reached the end of this album I see Mike D as an audioarchitect and sound sculptor of the first division. What he does with keyboards and mixing desks is essentially what Salvador Dali did with oils and canvas... both artists, both accomplished creators of thought provoking imagery what ever way you look at it!

The final track on this superb album is Eden's Song - a fantastic almost seamless voyage through timeless sound corridors and around heaven aspiring towers that lead you on to the gulf state of sheer sensual delight. mike's piano work is quite incredible and undeniably affluent. I've noticed that the production of his piano work never becomes repetitious or obscured by other instruments. It's a contemporary classical piece that Mike has given us here but it's the kind that's like that little solitary blue flower wading gently in the breeze in a meadow that's vast and complicated in design. Eden's Song is a work of pure beauty as is the rest of this amazing album from an amazingly talented and gifted recording artist.

Mike... it was a pleasure.. thanks.

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