review
Norman Records
9/10
You all remember Daniel Thomas Freeman's brilliant 'The Beauty Of Doubting Yourself' CD on Home Normal right?
Well that was released some five years ago - so his second album (not counting his work as part of Rameses III)
you could say is overdue. But let's face it there's so many artists working in a similar realm as Daniel that
just churn them out relentlessly to the point the music almost becomes disposable. He's taken his time with
'The Infinite and the Unknowable' and that's clearly apparent in the music. Painstakingly constructed over a
six year period it's like living in his shoes for over half a decade pondering the mysteries of divinity and
creation and then that epic introspective journey distilled and compressed into an easily swallowable pill
that takes you on that journey in just an hour and ten minutes.
What's striking about this album and Daniel's work as a whole is his ability to not only create expertly executed,
layered cinematic/ dark/ ambient soundscapes that take you out of yourself - but the ability to combine these
backdrops with intensely personal sounds that take the listener inside him as a man, trying to make sense of the
fact that we simply exist and what it entails to be human. Constructed from a mosaic of hundreds of layers of played
and heavily processed percussion, electric violin and electronics; the results are both heart wrenchingly beautiful
and occasionally disturbing. Such is life.
Ant
Thursday 21 July 2016