My Review: Rain Tree Crow - Blackwater

Rain Tree Crow - Blackwater

A silk-painted river flows in the voluminous envelope of a genius of unquestionable beauty that, once it was decided that Japan had to pause to sprout a new propulsive force, led the English band to live within the multiple rays of a new name, to bless the leaves of a tree willing to let down tracks as food for the seduction of those who would follow this choice. The visual material rides the sky, making it even softer than the recent past, to structure a road in which pop knows how to be a differently elegant dress, with the roots attached that can only generate a streetlight full of subtle light inside the vessels of our hearts. A song soars, claiming, without raising its voice, screwing itself into the warm atmosphere of notes designed to hold us in a powerful and slow embrace. A noise jazz that enters the ethno-ambient, to torpedo the noise of a decade with sounds saturated with idiocy and exaggerated propensities towards the annihilation of pure sound. David Sylvian lived the relationship with Karn badly: a point had to be found, in the forest of those two talents, leaving the advice to heaven to suggest melodies that looked to the heart of Europe. Away with the eastern dynamics, we return to an approach that keeps alive the torch of melody that, starting in France, rises up to the far north. From this musical jewel, a plethora of bands followed this tender miracle to forge a path from which world music could draw heavily. What is immediately striking is that, although there is David's marvellous singing, the track has in its music the nucleus that develops palms full of warm oil, capable of producing light with targeted, continuous arrangements, always on the move, to make us visit the dutiful thoughtfulness: catching the foam of this production is rather tiring and it is advisable to equip oneself with headphones and a generous mental silence…

It would be good, and the Old Scribe insists, to pay attention to the intense workings of the instruments' interplay, with their alternation and ability to come together only when it is really necessary to do so. Sylvian's vocal Goddess exerts a need for stillness, as a peaceful propensity for a wilderness that slowly sees itself surrounded by feathers, leaves and viaducts of seductive, amiable thrusts towards the belly. It glides through the dilation of sounds, the vibratos, the electric sparks, the fragments of Can and Kraftwerk that are glimpsed, with a substantial ability to communicate the impression that Prog here has only to learn with the army of creativity that probes every possibility to converge in an experimentation that is never exaggerated. 

They unashamedly like the fragmentation of the song form, in which the refrain here would only create discomfort, a waste of time, an unnecessary excess of spectacularity. Convincing, then, is the dynamic of something akin to an apparent monotony, an insistence on finding the oil to warm the hearts of imbeciles. No doubt, everything proceeds to be a magnet with a pole calibrated to converge beauty in this light breath that can create the trails of slowly moving lightning...

In conclusion: a hunt for prey is an essential melody, almost meagre but capable of surrounding a special moment, in which the one who feels disinterest in creating empty pockets of emotion wins and the prize is eternal glory...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

11th July 2023

https://open.spotify.com/track/7niezp6Y3ArlH4yypQ6sul?si=e6362eb6b6c34008