With cover art that looks suspiciously like the doors of Saint Patrick’s Catholic Cathedral, in Midtown Manhattan New York, (great place to visit if we can ever get back to the US again) Graham Greene’s new album is upon us; and with a cover like that and a scan of the track list you can tell it is going to be another suitably epic ride.
Over recent years we’ve had a number of largely instrumental recordings from West Australian guitarist Graham, but it was a studio mishaps- the loss of a number of ‘works in progress’ when a hard drive failed that has led Greene to this latest outpouring on ‘Symphonica Part 1’ first first installment of a proposed “larger, more complex and complete whole.”
We of course get the much loved soundscapes and guitar heroics but here there’s a real freeing of expansion, or maybe it’s simply deeper reflection, and a realisation that all roads are leading to a land that is both complex and intricate yet at the same time wonderfully organic and direct.
Melding hard rock with classical music has of course been something that musicians have dabbled with and agonized over for decades and whilst Ritchie Blackmore looks to Folk and Legends of a distinctly Medieval leaning you feel that Green is just too interested in everything to even to be able to consider stemming his scope.
As a result we again get a collection of songs that span time and space, legends and romance as well as soundscapes of a more architectural or geographical aspect.
For those keeping an eye out before release there have been three videos so far – the latest ‘High Crime of Reason’ which sees Donna Greene providing a suitably powerful yet restrained vocal against the exotic eastern backing was preceded by the shimmering echoes of it’s almost namesake ‘Danube Blues’ a wonderful, and rather daring, lets face it, amalgam of blues guitar set against the distinctive classical refrain. Between those ‘Dream to Receive’ perhaps the most luscious composition here was perhaps just a little too out of kilter here with it’s almost AOR vocal fading in after a purely instrumental opening. In isolation its a lovely song but the only composition here I felt was an uncomfortable fit.
But that of course is only to dip the toe into these uncharted waters.
Opening with ‘Beyond Here be Dragons’ and it’s religious organ opening we’re transported into a flighty guitar-led stem that at times is punctuated by almost Nightwish-like key stabs, its a lovely piece that segues into the darker ‘Unrepentant’ where the guitar acts as an almost antithesis to the repeating melody lines. I that was enough to win you over then the brooding, even darker, ‘The Machine Never Sleeps’ will when it too takes flight.
I wont pretend to get all the influences and ideas here – and anyway if I did that would be far too boring, instead I just let this one wash over me in a flood of Strauss, Vivaldi and Paganini as well as folk, Celtic and eastern threads woven into this great tapestry.
Some themes of course do reappear – I love ‘Trouble in Tangier’ as much as any of Greene’s previous North African themed work; whilst ‘Away with the Fae’ revisits the Celtic themes of the past and closer ‘Passage to Midgard’ the longest song here, is a Viking saga in itself and simply wonderful (the guitar one should also be bottled).
I’ve described Greene’s work in the past as taking you on a journey rather like the soundscapes of Satriani but this time there seems to be more substance than just a vision of an eye travelling the curves of a landscape – this one feels like its almost woven together and taking a definite shape. There’s a real sense of whole but also an acknowledgement that ‘a whole’ is just the sum of many parts and many of those parts are an odd fit. But that’s the beauty of this album and at its most essential of all of us as individuals, and the world as a whole. But while the world tries to paint everything the same dull colour I like to think that its the detail that matters.
Greene’s best yet.
9/10
Find Symphonica Part 1 on Apple iTunes, Amazon Music, Spotify and Tidal.
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