Great music and production....Very memorable.
by
John O from New York
I discovered Mark's web site and his music by accident while searching for some ambient and/or space music that I might like. I'm glad that I did. I've listened to this album entranced many times over. This album is a journey, and you'll want to listen to all of it each time you put it on.
Do you need to have a connection to 9/11 to appreciate this album? No. My review focuses on my connection to it, but it's good music on many levels. It's interesting, haunting, and memorable all at the same time.
For me, "Don’t Wait" is an album that I can easily relate to. I was unfortunately traveling by airplane between New York City and Washington DC on 9/11, so I saw the panic and chaos of the day's events first hand in both cities. My sister is an EMT Chief in New York City and was almost killed while standing at the base of one of the Towers when it fell. I think I aged ten years that day.
For me to leave one city on a business trip twenty minutes before it was attacked and arrive in another just as it was about to be attacked was bizarre. I went from NYC to Washington DC, and then from Washington DC on a long drive through Pennsylvania and other states to get back to my home in a suburb of NYC. It took ten hours in a rented car to get home that day. I cried when I saw my wife. I cried when I snuck into my baby boy's room to say goodnight while he slept.
"Don't Wait" opens with "Prelude". It's washing tones and ambient progressions sweep over you, almost in a calm-before-the-storm way. But it's not sad music. It's serene and calming. The faint background voices in several parts of the track can easily be interpreted many ways (voices of people in the WTC that morning, airplane radio chatter with a control tower, walkie talkie chatter, communications between astronauts and a control room, etc). That's up to the listener to decide… Excellent opener.
"The Twins" introduces a feeling of sadness and foreboding. It's easy to imagine the towers sensing that their end was coming.
"9/12", to me, is what the gentle sounds of destruction and aftermath sound like. "Gentle" sounds of "destruction"? Yes. Listen to it. You'll get it. In the middle of the track it's easy for me to envision the news coverage of that day playing back in slow motion. Mark's occasional use of an off-in-the-distance deep thump easily brings to mind an image of metal being hit, or an airplane impacting the Towers, etc. An ominous sound. Carefully placed guitar accents and harmonics throughout the song are nice additions.
After the long fading ending note of "9/12", the opening note of "Blue" is jarring. This song has almost a ghost like quality to it, drifting around your head and conjuring up images as it plays. Guitar feedback in several locations of the track is well placed. The gentle rain at the end reminded me of a cleansing. Peaceful.
The rain leads into "I Wasn't Finished Loving You". It opens as an acoustic guitar piece with background ambient tones. The rain continues to fall in the beginning of this track but eventually fades away. It transitions to include some distant electric guitar solos before a long fade out begins to end the song. For me, this song is crushingly sad for some reason. I can't say exactly why. It just is. Perhaps it's because of the context. It's definitely a highlight of the album.
"Forward" seems to be a transition song to lift the listener out of the more ambient mode of the tracks that preceded it and prepare you for "Glory".
"Glory", the closer, is a terrific acoustic and electric guitar combo. Nice soloing throughout. Nice rhythm guitar. It's an uplifting song to leave the listener on a positive note.
