If the Wimshurst's Machine's (TWM) music were available on prescription, they could, quite conceivably put the pharmaceutical industry out of business! Their debut CD 'a traveler who didn't ask for glory' was produced in 2004 and features some of the most inventive and inspiring instrumental/soundtrack pieces ever to have been confined onto an audio CD for the benefit of the masses. Here, you'll find healings and explorations and innovations in sound courtesy of some extemporary masters of Keyboards, Sax, Acoustic and Electric Guitars, Clarinet, Cornet, Trumpet, and Drums. It's all in the music folks and I'm gonna have to explain what happens when you press the play button...
If you were going to try to capture the essence and mood of a sunrise in sounds alone, then TWM have accomplished it with Mountain sunrise - an amazing album opener if ever there was one that brings bird song, keyboards, and strings straight into your moment while you bask in the widening light and colour that of sunrise brings with it!
Fatherland strengthens and binds your enchantment with some soft percussion and mesmerizing keyboard, sax, and vox meanderings. It's such a beautiful piece that can be played at low volume for hints and hues and loud volume for complete saturation of spirit.
Up to the road and back again is a superb musical accomplishment with incredibly smooth and stylish arrangements and equally smooth and stylish musicianship to match. The production is excellent but it's the composition that stands out like a diamond on a vast shore of pebbles!
Mystical sea captures the naturally occurring shoreline and waves to blend and balance the seascape with the creatively inspired soundscape that Wimshurst's Machine are undoubted masters of. Some superb sax work parades itself through the track like a multicoloured epitaph to everything we would want to find in such soul food. Rich and dreamy, Mystical Sea is truly something to behold!
Freedom calls is that little excursion of the heart to the soul complete with the kind of pan-european sweeps, keyboards, sax, and percussion we all have as soundtracks to our more pleasant dreams. Watch out for the tightly synchronized strings and piano sounds... beautiful!
A long journey is the piece that could have earned TWM the 2004 Best International Audio Therapeutics Award! The track constantly has you wondering how on earth these musicians manage to get any sleep when they're producing works of this magnitude! Cleverly conceived bass and percussion work are finely balanced with the atmospheric sax and keys that wind their way around your emotions like spiraling all-embracing hugs. It's an amazing piece of work by any standard and my favourite TWM track so far! Watch out for the funk bass riffs that appear here and there... brilliant!
Magic lights is bass and percussion focused with incidental piano riffs and just the right amount of passages of sweeps and pads added for extra comfort. Celtic death ballad meanwhile, features some very clever synth and inevitably superb sax work to make the track shine like a million suns! Then... comes the female vocal parts.. enchanting, mesmerizing, and ultimately soul enriching.. the engineer must have been a constant state of euphoria! Watch out for the jazzy piano and horn fills that give the track added depth and dynamics!
Indian shores takes you by the collar all the way across the kind of planes you wish could physically exist somewhere upstairs... that place you'd run to whenever you're feeling a little too introspective! The percussion is outstanding as it delivers the kind of East Asian beats we all know and love and then there's the intricacies of the sax playing... charming... seamless... exotic! A fabulous piece of music that epitomizes the ingenuity and excellence that is The Wimshurst's Machine at their best!
Intermezzo: The Folly opens up a whole new world of vision in sound. There's some fantastic acoustic guitar playing here.. set at exactly the right amount of compression and separation with a tad of echo complete with bird song. Then, we get to Variations over the folly with it's semblances to A long journey but with some extremely nice guitar and bass exotix. It's a piece for the new millennia certainly with it's astonishing array of pipes and synth collaborations.. by far my most favourite track SO FAR!
Electrolife is such a brilliantly composed sound collage when heard through the speakers that you're yearning to hear it through headphones within the first few moments. When you do... you are completely, helplessly, hopelessly blown clean away! Electrolife is beyond borders for me... so I'll call it contemporary traditional electronica scaping!
Night celebrations is officially, and without a doubt, my favourite track on the album. There's so much going on here that a couple of hundred plays might just get you to where you wanna go! Excellently composed and arranged, the track is unquestionably TWM's anthem piece and should the band be performing live at any time... it's worth the flight and ticket price just to experience this one in front of a very very large audience!
Rainbow (dedicated to Iris) opens with some very sharp synth FX that are quickly replaced by some truly original and stylish guitar and sax. It amazes me when musicians are this expressive collectively and TWM know lots and lots about this kind of effective expression! I can think of a fe hundred movie soundtracks where Rainbow fits quite nicely!
The fall of the ancient town (electronic symphony in D minor) is the kind of collated finale track that many soundtrack artists aspire towards. Keep an eye on the keyboards that seem to have come spiraling out of the spire of some famous cathedral just to be part of this magnificent epic! Voices, sweeps and pads rebound across the floors, walls, and ceilings leaving you completely voluntarily bound and gagged in amazement. The title section beginning with the brass section is so dutifully delivered and engineered that it's hard to remind yourself of the fact that TWM are still unsigned. As the finale to this wonderful album, 'The fall of the ancient town' sums up TWM's mastery of instruments and arrangements. It sums up TWM's innovation and excellence and reminds us all that indeed there is still plenty of beauty and love to be found in contemporary soundtrack music - the kind that the Wimshurst's Machine are breaking new ground with all the time!
