Nature of Things By New Latitude

 

Nature of Things

By

New Latitude

Written by

Steve Sheppard

 

It was a wonderful thing to see on my work list a new release was to reviewed for New Latitude, I am a big fan of their instrumental music, and I still have fond memories of the Wood, Steel and Grace album from 2021, so let’s embark on a new music journey right now with the team of Erickson, Carr, Strickland, Stone and Schuman.

The opener was simply effervescent and a global fusion of jazz, rock, acoustic and a little Latin along the way with the track Led to Believe. Some similarities on those aforementioned genres could point to other artists like Incendio; however this one for me was a wonderfully energetic beginning, just perfect to start our musical sojourn with.

The smooth cruise of tone continued with the next offering entitled Invisible Frame; this flavourful form had a lush acoustic nature to its construction, this for me is a prime example of the quality that can be achieved when utilising the best qualities of an acoustic guitar, a performance that brought the sun out for me.

On Tribute we have a steady rhythmic piece, Carr and Erikson combined forces to create a symbiotic partnership on guitar here, on a piece that also had a little emotive nature about its overall construction, one which flowed beautifully into the track Circumstances Have Changed, which would be one of my favourites pieces from the release, the tempo for this arrangement was utter perfection and opened up a whole world of movement and rhythm, with elements of both Latin and even rock contained within , I would imagine this could be a very popular live song to listen to.

Now we reach the farthest shore before our return home, and we come across a track that was released as a single back in the year of hope of 2021 and called Softer Than Silence, the gentle natural sounds at the beginning once more set the scene for a sublime instrumental composition, and a perfect arrangement for a single indeed, the melody is so memorable, that little mixture of minor and major always works for me and a fine way indeed to conclude the release indeed.

Nature of Things by New Latitude is a crisp and fluent new release by the group, for me it highlights all that’s good and great in the world of acoustic instrumental music, five tracks are contained within this collection, and each and every one of them are presented and produced to the highest quality possible, this is one of those albums that would be simply perfect for a little drive time along a sunny road with the top down.