My Review: Dexter Britain - Stay With Me

Dexter Britain - Stay With Me

The enchanted world comes out of the shell of its time, takes up residence within the skilful hands of a British composer, accustomed like an irresistible vice, to visiting the mental planes of poignant dreams. It is not difficult to recognise his style, his approach, it is difficult to understand his direction: his music is a dispersion of salts, of liquors that melt in the belly. Stay With Me is a medieval spark that, escaping from its haunted countryside of merriment, comes to visit our chests: it will be aching, because there is no opposition to this autumn storm. 

From the outset, Simon Robinson, aka Dexter Britain, has decided to isolate the idea of agglomerated pressures and stylise his ideas, as thunderstorms do.

You hear these notes, bacilli, atoms, showers of harmonious sorrows crashing on the staff, and the thrill grips you. We are in the vicinity of a classical aria, with instruments from the 1800s being accompanied by an ipad, by technology in that even deceptions hold hands, can live close...

A slow progression of smooth-backed violins, with the sky just a stone's throw away, but then it slows down, the wings take on the weight of the world and we arrive in the vicinity of the earth's soil. The cymbals and string quartet take aim: the melody and rhythm must necessarily travel down the avenue of drama that makes no concessions. Hence the intermediate planes, the scratchy strings with the Ambient base that torpedo the chaos and take flight.

The chords and the harmonic turn are short, but are repeated with the inserts of an overbearing arrangement that enhances the piano and tightens the camera towards the crash: the harpsichord, methodical and gymnastic, only appears in the second half.

You know what doesn't work in this track? The delirium that snuffs out your breath, the fruit of a miracle that has a name and a surname, that dares to sing and render us useless, burdened with emotions without the instruction booklet. 

She, the angel who has no eyes but feels our hearts, ascends into the circle of our intimacy and melts it away. Jenny Maloney: she won't tell you anything, but the old scribe hasn't been able to stand her for years, because her prowess, deadly, always resembles a war between souls in search of the last inflicted punch.

Extraordinary, intense, she puts her words down as if she were cooking existence inside a pot full of dreams, surely glowing.

She has the good sense to absent herself when the cello and violin, halfway through the piece, say goodbye to everyone and step onto the stage of indigestible sound.

Little notes return and then the finale, with drums, drums, for a few seconds, because nothing has to take off. And Jenny there, like a golden eagle, ready to smile at us before the lethal bite: she and the strings have taken the right direction, the chest from above can still be seen and the aim is perfect. 

The dramatic sense is a deception, make yourself small, eliminate the feeling that has already killed you and you will hear how the continuous tension is nothing but a gallant invitation to get on the merry-go-round of an emotion that, like the torrential rain that stops only when the enjoyment ceases, will have a few minutes to spend.

We are sure that every sound articulation depicted here by Simon is a lullaby for adults in search of a kiss, lasting almost six minutes, like a madness that finds peace with the last grimace...

Every tear will inhabit this music that, starting with Classical, visiting electronics, and ending in an angelic suite, will be able to make you feel the intoxication of those thunders, of a polite thunderstorm that will wet your hair, so as not to hurt you too much...Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

2nd June 2023

https://dexterbritain.bandcamp.com/album/stay-with-me