ORCHESTRAMAXFIELDPARRISH

Tears

Faith Strange Recordings (2002)

review by Bill Binkelman

I have mixed feelings about this ambient music CD, the work of Mike Fazio recording here under the pseudonym OrchestraMaxfieldParrish. Those songs that I do like on Tears I like a lot. Then there are two to which I have a negative reaction. On balance, though, I would give the CD a solid recommendation because of the brave nature of what Fazio is doing as well as the music contained on the tracks I do enjoy. And, while I had to hit the "skip" a few times when playing the album, you may not have to.

Instrumentation on the nine tracks (which range from one and half to over seventeen minutes in length) varies from electric and acoustic guitars, drums, piano and bass to more traditionally ambient tools of the trade (samplers, synths). This variety also extends to the music, as I hinted at above. The album opens with a short (the minute and a half piece mentioned earlier) abstract electric guitar song, "Beauty and Wonder," and segues into the full-bodied (guitars, drums, piano and synths) upbeat "Dorothea Gets Her Wish," full of sparkling electronic notes, rolling piano chords and soaring electric guitars (placed back of the mix). From there, we are treated to a very nice pure ambient cut, "...and then a crowd, impossible to number," featuring layers of billowing serene but minor key synths helped along by some dialogue snippets (one sounds like Spock, one sounds like Lousie Fletcher from Brainstorm and the other one I'm unsure of).

As I mentioned above, some of the tracks on Tears are misses for me, including the disjointed "A Lot Like You," which tries to evolve an opening stretch of noise and static into an acoustic guitar and piano number resembling an instrumental folk music piece. For me, it didn't gel and neither of the disparate parts hit me much either. Likewise, the next song, "Where The Angels Crash And Die," while deserving of its pessimistic title, plays like a goth rock band (electric guitars, drums, bass) jamming to no real purpose except to craft a lot of dark textures. If that turns your crank, you'll love this.

Things take a sharp turn upwards (meaning, for the better) starting with "Bow," a drifting but melancholy Jeff Pearce-like electric guitar song that also features assorted percussive effects on metal, glass, and wood which are, remarkably enough, cohesive and non-pretentious. Guitars on this track are both strummed and also used as drone-like ambience. From here on out, the album is on a roll, with one solid number after another. "Waiting For Twilight" is a serene ambient cut, on which Fazio's electric guitars sound more like synths as they weave a darkish, but not too, pattern in the night sky. At more than seventeen minutes, "The Tears Of Christ" is far and away the most ambitious track on the CD. Using nothing but electric guitars, Fazio explores abstract minimalism, experimenting with the silence between notes as well as a variety of tones, shadings, and more overt "guitar-like" musical stylings. The only other artist doing anything at all like this that I'm familiar with is Jon Durant, and Fazio stands toe-to-toe with him on this piece. It's possible that the track could have been shortened, yet with minimalistic music like this, how much is enough or not enough?

For me, the closing track is also far and away my favorite. "Music From the Empty Corner" (an alarmingly appropriate title) also journeys down minimal pathways, but this time does so with assorted bells and gongs, most of them reverberating and sustaining for long periods of time. The various tones, each of them pleasant in their own right, coalesce to form fascinating patterns yet in a completely random fashion. While the music is not "dark," there is a brilliant juxtaposition of contemplation tinted with profound sadness (or at least that's my reaction) which transfixed me every time I played this cut. While twelve minutes long, I never tired of the wind-chime like allure of this selection.

The upside of Tears far outweighs my complaints and since it's easy enough to program out the two cuts I don't care for, I can recommend it to ambient and minimalist fans with breezy confidence, assuming the listener is not opposed to non-traditional (i.e. not synthesizers) sources for his/her ambient bliss. Because, the majority of this album contains more than a few blissful moments, as well as stretches of artistic creativity and virtuosity that bode well for Mike Fazio's future releases.