Don’t be scared it’s only an album by a keyboardist not a bassist! All joking aside Ten’s Darrel Treece-Birch probably suffers from people jumping to conclusions all the time about the sort of music he’d make left to his own devices. I mean mention a keyboardist to me and I think Prog, then maybe Jazz or even Blues. Given the output of the band Ten and the fact Darrel plays in a UK Rush tribute band you’d be right first time.
No as a rule I’m not the biggest Prog fan out there, I’ll take classical all the time if I want odd time signatures and self-indulgence, and if your songs clock in at over ten minutes I’ll maybe choose a TV show instead. I can on the other hand appreciate Prog though, and hanging round with enough musicians over the years I can even pick the good from the bad.
Of course ‘No More Time’ is also a ‘Concept Album’ concerned with the journey of the spirit. Fair enough, no whisky and no women… and no vocals either to clutter things up, except in four of the songs here.
With a bunch of guest musicians from his various bands Darrel has managed to create a ‘whole’ with plenty of texture largely build through not just keyboards as you might expect, but via extensive use of the guitar.
One of the best tracks here in isolation ‘Music of the Spheres’ contains a glorious vocal from Karen Fell, but while that track shines and has a certain directness most of the album paints an often bleak or intangible landscape with plenty of time for reflection like in ‘The River Dream’ or even ‘Twilight’.
There’s a persuasive nature to a lot of the pieces and gentle nudging from repeated refrains but the overwhelming feel from the piece as a whole is of moving through a landscape and not just simply experiencing distance travelled but also time, weather and day and night.
It’s easy to bandy around words like ‘cinematic’ in response to largely instrumental albums but this to me feels more personal that a widescreen movie, more claustrophobic, more real, and closer, not seen from the outside at a distance.
Music should either makes you move or make you think, but good music should always take you on a journey and leave you with more than you started out with. This does just that.
