Morpheus Music
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
94
Posts :
165
Posted : May 25, 2012 16:40:47
|
STYLE
Global psychill journey album.
Tranzworld Express is a transporting experience that whisks the listener away from home on a speeding dream train breezing across musical, cultural and technological borders. The pace is mid-tempo - a comfortable dance groove with a locomotive-like regularity suggestive of casual speed and passing vistas. Western soul sounds and club elements get the party going, but soon the scene has shifted and a Middle Eastern dub beat drives Peacedance further from home. The sense of the exotic is heightened as the album progresses: international instrumentation and diverse voices interwoven among bright recording effects, vocoder snatches and lush strings. "I know everything about nothing!" declares a lively voice at the opening of Virtually Enlightened; multinational hand drums and twanging plucked wires here juxtaposed against subtle sequences and brash brass flourishes. Peter Westheimer clearly enjoys a rich melting pot of music without the encumbrance of genre restrictions. China India (as you might deduce) fuses the colours of these two evocative Asian sources of mystique - bells trees and electronica; er-hu and sitar; expressive tablas and programmed beats; piercing pipes and soft female vocals. The binding factor for the album is the relatively consistent beat - wheels on tracks, hypnotic patterns, express rhythm.
IN DEPTH
Peter Westheimer brings a sense of global responsibility to his music, dealing with such important themes as the planet's growing population, finite resources and climate change challenges; East-West relations and the struggling of peace processes; religious enlightenment, fundamentalism and media control; ecologically friendly transport modes and natural energy sources. These serious concerns thread the music of Tranzworld Express with a dynamic urgency: stirring beats, driving basslines and insistent melodies. The tightly woven multinational instrumentation (Westheimer himself plays a wide range of instruments, ranging from keyboard to sitar, with much in between) highlights a vision of potential global harmony and cooperation. That said - this is by no means merely a gloomy presentation of cerebral ideals - the music is full of emotion: ranging from the blissfully ecstatic through lively, vivacious and inspirational to somewhat threatening and disquieting. The artist's website explains that he sees music as an agent of change - unlike much of today's 'worldbeat' music this is an album with an authenticity born from genuine passion and actual familiarity with many of the locations aurally conjured "inspired by travels through Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the USA in 2009. Its' rhythmic energies and perspectives come from the moving scenery of contemporary communities both rural and urban, and a retracing of family history."
ARTWORK
The front cover of this eco-friendly digipack depicts a young woodland of muted colours and delicate slender birches as seen by a fleeting railway passenger. Faint reflections haze the view and suddenly the stark visage of a tribal mask looms in the lower right. Drawn to peer at the ghostly face a bird form is discerned, gliding vertically; eyes stare fixedly through arched curves in the wings. The package unfolds into three panels with the disc held neatly in a plastic free-central grip - at last a CD case with no plastic at all! Track titles are on the rear of the cover with track times alongside. The third outer panel holds sleeve notes and a scattering of inspirational images. Inside each track has a space of its own with a connected image and brief explanatory notes.
OVERALL
Peter Westheimer delivers the aptly titled Tranzworld Express through Integrity Music Records as his sixth full length album and follow-up to the 2004 release Music Sculptures. Based near Byron Bay, Australia, Westheimer has embarked on supporting his music with multilayered videos of all tracks and performing audiovisual shows live incorporating his interests in video art, renewable energy, biodiversity & rail transport overall highlighting music as an agent of change and joy. A classical background in early life, performance with bands & theatre and recording material for soundtracks, documentaries and multimedia installations (to cover just part of the CV) provides a broad musical foundation upon which to draw.
Thus Tranzworld Express has arisen "inspired by travels through Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the USA in 2009." Promotional material explains that "Its' rhythmic energies and perspectives come from the moving scenery of contemporary communities both rural and urban, and a retracing of family history." The music is available for exploration at the Peter Westheimer website where, as well as the audio, verbal explanations of number of the recordings are provided.
  MORPHEUS MUSIC
www.morpheusmusic.co.uk
ELECTRONIC MUSIC MALL
http://www.electronicmusicmall.com |
|
|
|
