ALBUM REVIEW REVUE: A Look Back at the Year

Posted on June 1, 2015 by maestrobeats

Last June, we began reviewing albums on a weekly basis and we’re thrilled to celebrate a year’s worth of awesome content at Second Inversion! We’re celebrating by announcing the top 5 reviews. Let the countdown begin!

5. A Far Cry: Dreams and Prayers

“When really, really good musicians get together to play music, something magical happens. Some of the best performances in history have been called divine or heavenly. No matter their faith (or lack thereof), those who appreciate music can agree there’s something otherworldly about an amazing performance or recording.”

4. The Knights: the ground beneath our feet

“If the ground beneath our feet has indeed disappeared in parts of this album, that’s okay: outer space sure sounds pretty good to me.”

3. Christopher Bono: BARDO

“When I had this album playing at home, several friends commented on how “epic” it felt. And that’s true. If you didn’t read the liner notes or have any frame of reference for Bono’s inspiration, it could totally sound like the soundtrack for an amazing RPG or fantasy film. Played straight through it is like a saga told in sound and the fact that you may not know the details doesn’t stop you from connecting to, understanding, and enjoying it.”

2. John Luther Adams: Become Ocean

“As for the recording? The ideal scenario for the listener in a performance of this piece is to be surrounded by the orchestra and furthermore have the opportunity to move around within the physical space, if desired. Listening to this recording in surround sound is the next best thing! Adams told me, ‘In making this recording we took special care to mix in stereo much of the time, so that the experience of hearing this music in stereo is as vivid as possible and gives you a sense of being immersed.'”

1. Ólafur Arnalds: The Chopin Project

“…It’s just one glorious, delicate piece after another. From the gentle shoosh-shoosh in “Reminiscence” (during which there’s a point where you can even hear a performer taking in breath) to the distant chatter and rainfall heard in “Nocturne in G Minor,” the recordings make the listener feel close to the piano – in the same room, even – and so very close to the music. Several tracks use Chopin as a jumping off point, which turns the album as a whole into a dreamlike story arc you wish would never end.”

Huge thanks go out to our staff and interns for their writing: Maggie Molloy, Jill Kimball, Rachele Hales, Seth Tompkins, and Maggie Stapleton.

ALBUM REVIEW: Checkpoint Charlie from Ghost Against Ghost (EP)

Posted on May 4, 2015 by maestrobeats

by Rachele Hales

The last time we checked in with Christopher Bono he had just released his full-length album Bardo. Now he’s back with an EP from his latest project Ghost Against Ghost, a beautiful and brutal triumph that tackles the theme of love. Checkpoint Charlie only glimpses the full theme, which will be presented completely in the double-length album Oia later this year.

Oia will be a 2-hour dark/romantic saga about love and separation from love, outlining “a vast, emotional arc that examines the nature and definition of love, moving from the heart-wrenching experience of separation – a result of love fixated on one human or object – to the realization of a superior form of love discovered through empirical insight and liberation from fixation.” What we get in this EP is only a slice of that love story. “Part 1” draws upon influence from late romantic composers and uses the dreamy, lush layering Bono is so deft at to gently coax the listener into a psychedelic, melancholic experience. It’s the kind of sad that makes me want to call Bono on the phone just to check in and make sure he’s okay. Then “Part 2: The Descent” fades in and delivers one gut punch of a drone “designed to voice the sense of persistent darkness that abounds in the experience of despair once the terror of heartbreak sets in.” Now the urge to make that phone call becomes the need to lay on the couch and have an ugly cry – but in a good way! Bono taps into the universal anguish of heartbreak and strips it of adjectives, of metaphors, and gives us a piece of music that sounds like one long, cathartic scream. But still in a good way!

At the end of the 14ish minute EP I felt like a woman without skin; a bundle of raw, exposed nerves. The upcoming release of “Oia” will conclude this story arc, no doubt with the healing instrumentals we always love from Bono, and offer some grace and clarity to our imagined protagonist and balance out the penetrating despair Checkpoint Charlie evokes. Until then, what good story is complete without compelling & emotional starting point? Listen to this EP now and ready the ships for our hero’s journey to harmony.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Christopher Bono’s BARDO

Posted on July 21, 2014 by maestrobeats

by Rachele Hales

stock-4 Christopher Bono spent his early life devoted to baseball and was even drafted by the Seattle Mariners before an injury prevented him from playing, but it’s this music that he really knocks out of the park. This is an artist just totally hitting his stride. I feel like I haven’t even experienced enough in life to fully appreciate an album like this; music that is powerful and humble and confronts the spiritual and the unknowable beginning from a place of absolute desperation.

Bono’s narrative for Bardo draws heavily from Tarot (specifically “The Fool”) as well as the Tibetan Book of the Dead to share the surreal journey of The Fool as he moves through a cycle of loss — from intense sorrow toward the afterlife and eventually rebirth. (“Bardo” translates from Tibetan as “the transition.”)

The story is told in four movements, with preludes before each meant to suggest “ambient portals” acting as passages to the next chapter of The Fool’s journey. “Bardo I: Enter the Mystic” invites you in with a drone and then quickly jumps to a stormy, chaotic yearning before, as the liner notes indicate, our protagonist is driven to “face the churning storm of dark destiny emanating from his own mind.”

The listener soon finds herself in “Bardo II: The End of the Oligarchs,” a musically jagged, violent, thumping battle that ends abruptly before everything, including the life of The Fool, is destroyed and gives way to the calm sounds of water. “It is The Fool passing from his earthly end into what the Tibetans call the Chönyid Bardo, or the state between lives… He begins a spiraling journey through the hallucinations and obstacles inside this labyrinth of karmic repercussions.” In “Bardo III: Enter the Void,” his offenses and virtues are weighed by the deities and the music takes on a militant tone before swelling, swelling, swelling, and then bursting into silence as The Fool learns to trust his own inner wisdom and thus is liberated. Here the music carries him rhythmically to a place above and beyond the darkness of doubt and we hear the euphonious expression of prayers for our Fool from those who remain in the physical plane.

At this point we have listened to The Fool’s odyssey from despair to destruction, destruction to death, and death to liberation. Before entering Bardo IV, we are treated to “Endless Doors to Endless Wombs,” which is this reviewer’s favorite of all the preludes. The beautiful, meditative piece lasts for a blissful seven minutes and, if you close your eyes and turn up the volume, it might feel like you’re floating.

The Fool finally enters “Bardo IV: Clouds Blooming at the Thought of Union,” which tells of his rebirth by way of gentle, pulsing sounds that cycle, crescendo, and decrescendo until there is only silence and our protagonist begins his story anew.

When I had this album playing at home, several friends commented on how “epic” it felt. And that’s true. If you didn’t read the liner notes or have any frame of reference for Bono’s inspiration, it could totally sound like the soundtrack for an amazing RPG or fantasy film. Played straight through it is like a saga told in sound and the fact that you may not know the details doesn’t stop you from connecting to, understanding, and enjoying it. That’s really saying something. The fact that this is sixty minutes of extremely dense material yet it remains approachable from start to finish (or should I say rebirth?) is quite a feat. Listening with headphones and the volume cranked up was like ! in my heart and I didn’t just appreciate the experience, but also the experience of the experience if that makes any sense.