DAVID WRIGHT

Walking with Ghosts

AD Music (2002)

reviewed by Bill Binkelman

David Wright's extremely ambitious album Walking With Ghosts is more like three or four "mini" albums. For one thing, it's between 74 and 75 minutes long! But what I mean by my comment is how the recording has discernible "movements" as it tracks through its fifteen songs. Besides that analytical statement, I can also testify that this is a brilliant CD as well. Even the songs that I cared for less than others are still clearly superior music. And most of what is here (and at almost 75 minutes, that's a lot of music) is absolutely fantastic. I'm sure I played this thing at least ten to fifteen times before writing this review. Some of the songs on this album are among the best cuts I heard all of last year.

Once you clear the opening short spacy/ambient piece ("Going Down?"), the first "movement" (tracks 2, 3, 4, 5, titled "A Certain Malaise," "Road to Nowhere (A Nomadic Tale)," "Midnight in the Shadow of Temptation and Delight" and "Return of the Nomad") features upbeat, punchy, catchy, rhythm-driven British EM (British EM differs in feel and texture from German/Berlin-school EM in several hard-to-describe but recognizable ways). There is a scattering of slight Germanesque sequencer work, but it's slight and not dominant at all. Later passages in this movement features some of the same musical "themes" from earlier, but slows them down and adds tasty proggish guitar (Andy Lobban and Bill Kibby take turns throughout the album on electric guitar - and sometimes the guitar work is pronounced, so if you dislike stinging electric leads, be forewarned that some of the songs on Walking With Ghosts do rock!). Before track 5 is over, though, we're back into even higher energy propulsive EM than the opening section.

The second movement starts with track 6 ("Beyond Paradise") and here Wright weaves a gently loping and highly melodic web of new age keyboards mixed with subtle EM rhythms. The melodic refrain is handled first by pretty synth strings and later by what sounds like a sampled Theremin! This movement concludes on the next track and thematic elements are played around with for a bit by a sensuous sax sample - but it's not jazzy though and the Theremin does most of the interpreting of the theme.

"Darklands," (track 8) as you might expect from its title, takes the album into darker territory. Minor tonalities, doses of melancholy, subdued soaring electric guitar leads and mournful echoed piano all contribute to a bleak yet beautiful slice of ambient/EM/new age music. This "movement" is less distinct than what has come before; in fact, Wright's use of repeated refrains and motifs surfaces less frequently from here on until track 12. "No More Angels" (track 10) is highlighted by Andy Lobban's sterling guitar work. This song is much more guitar-oriented than most of the others on the CD. Sad-sounding prog-rockish guitar mixes with spacy keyboards, but once again Wright finds a way to always interject a sense of beauty even when things are mournful. The piece gets fairly energetic at times during the song's seven-plus minutes, but nothing frenetic or too loud.

The last four tracks are a suite of sorts, all titled "Walking with Ghosts," followed by a sub-title ("Penumbra," "The Gift," "Acheron," and "C'est la vie"). As a thematic suite, it's magnificent. The music has an almost neo-classical feel as it begins with piano and a very subtle undercurrent of keyboards that slowly grows to include lush strings. The repeating motif reminded me somewhat of Philip Glass at times. The next track has the same "feel" but ramps it all up by adding stinging electric guitar leads and pulsing synths/synth-beats. Drama is underscored and bold-faced by Wright's great use of synth string sections playing short bowed chords. The third song slows down and brings spacy synth effects into play against the muted guitar work, along with a backdrop of thunder and falling rain. Piano eventually comes to the forefront as the cut once again moves into somber and melancholic soundscape territory. As this song transitions to the last cut, broad sweeping strings (bowed and plucked) impart a strong classical texture, which only increases with a beautiful oboe sample. Massive-sounding cathedral-style organ takes over the melodic refrain in a blaze of dramatic thunder, along with analog-synth notes, church organ, pulsing EM beats, piano and who knows what else, all repeating the musical motif that was introduced back in the first track of the suite. Before the end, though, things subside into a quiet stillness before a final mini-crescendo.

I normally refrain from listing so much specific detail about an album's music in my reviews these days, but a work as artistically complex and emotionally satisfying as Walking with Ghosts deserves the "full treatment," as it were. Wright's liner notes infer that he put his whole heart and soul into this recording, drawing on his many musical influences and recording parts of it all over the world from 1998 to 2002. I can believe it. This album is an amazing feat of both technical wizardry (the recording sounds awesome on headphones) and artistic soul-baring. Seldom does overt electronic music reflect this level of genuine emotion. Veering from sincerely powerful to joyously affirming to somberly tragic, yet beautifully haunting throughout, Walking with Ghosts is a landmark piece of work. Highly recommended.