In a different silence...
Tym S. | San Francisco, CA USA | 05/11/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Miles Davis' "In a Silent Way" (1969) is the inspiration for the title and approach of this contemporary classical album by Danish composer Olsen. The original was midnight meditation music, yellow candles in an indigo darkness, with furtive vamps and brilliant half-thoughts ebbing and flowing from stillness into inspired groove. While made with an electric ensemble, it had a warm rounded sound, intimate and glowing.
By contrast, Olsen has taken the contemplative dynamics of the source's approach, and crafted an entirely new piece that is more austere and spacious. It has a different beauty to it, by turns tense and melancholy. Olsen takes the title very seriously with pockets of stillness and low rises of sound. It feels like tentative footsteps finding their way through troubled shadows. In form and emotional effect it actually recalls the textural moods of cinematic thriller scores by Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, or Roy Budd. That's a compliment; it was enjoyable to me as much for its cinematic parallels as for its new music approach. This is a music of smart darkness."