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Ian Brown: Music Of The Spheres
Album Review
28-9-2001
SashaS

 

Ian Brown, the former Stone Rose-r, has made an album for all the recovering children once-lost to fashion

If Ian Brown’s third album were conceived as a repost to all the critics who claimed he couldn’t sing, could neither play nor songwrite, than this is his slap in their faces with a whale-size kipper! Brown has produced the best album of his career by going back to his musical roots to bring it into the future.

The opening ‘F.E.A.R.’ is already well known with its epic proportion having invaded our radiowaves and it should have reached the top of the charts but they do mean nothing more than being a promo-tool for (hardly selling) albums. ‘Music Of The Spheres’ reclaims the faith in music as an artistic expression.

Brown decided to go back to his Stone Roses legacy but that template has been used to build a whole new entity. It is far from the pastiche although it retains the spirit of loved-up, drugged-out dance-psychedelia Manchester so masterfully churned out at the end of two decades ago. No need to get nostalgic, here is the most updated, post-contemporary edition.

‘Stardust’, ‘The Gravy Train’ (a look at the daze called fame), use loops, cyber-beats, the colossal arrangements, unusual sonic detailing that takes you on a trip through permanently troubled souls. Brown is not adverse to a bit of prog-rock either with a guitar solo in ‘Northern Lights’ that ELO should be proud of, or Chris Squire, for that matter. ‘Forever And A Day’ has a guitar-motif of the Gary Moore vintage although there is more of a folksy-feel to the track.

It gets trad-funky in ‘Whispers’, ‘El Mundo Pequeno’ is a bit mystifying track with its Spanish lyrics but not less effective; ‘Shadow Of A Saint’ closes ‘Music Of The Spheres’, all delivered in a relaxed vocal style that proudly retains its Mancunian accent rather than faking some mid-Atlantic bull. Its themes, alike the ancient theory of correlation between harmonious sounds and planets in our system, simply are without preaching or attempting to convert to any viewpoint.

Ian Brown has produced an album that should be respected (and bought) by everyone. It is the record for this quarter, nay – this year.

Maximum-warp, cap!

9/10

 


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