By Kingfisher
First Light Music
www.kingfish.net
I've played this album a lot, and honestly, it's not wearing as well on repeated hearings. Still, I think it's worth listening to, and if you have an awful lot of time, reading the liner notes. There are 10 tracks on here, some instrumental, some vocal; a major setback on this is that Kingfisher can't sing. At least not too well. His voice sounds weak, like he's having trouble hitting the notes, and not as expressive as the music deserves. Another singer would have made this all much more successful.
The music itself is based on dreams, which you can find out about at a corresponding web page; Kingfisher himself plays keyboards and has a host of other folks playing with him, perhaps most notably Martin Tillman on Cello and Tony B. on guitars. Stylistically it's a mishmash, which is a good thing, really. Songs sound quite different from each other, it seems to me that it's kind of a smattering of all sorts of styles from the 60s, 70s, and 80s all tossed into the same salad. Some of it's dreamy, some of it's folksy; while the first track "Cave" has a nice atmosphere about it with piano and cello and some dreamy arpeggiating in the lower piano register, "Turtle Diary," musically on those same lines, never seems to get started. "Jesus In The Garden Of Bees" ends up with a nice 'African chrous' feel at the end.
My fave on this on is the last track, "Always Coming Home." Great melody, quiet arrangement, makes you feel something; one of those songs you'll dust this CD off for every now and then just so you can hear it as time goes by. The web page is quite a maze of stuff, and the album notes talk up a storm about different religions, symbols, dreams, and what have you. If you're into this kinda thing, take a peek.
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