Secrets from a Gemstone By Craigology

 

Secrets from a Gemstone

By

Craigology

Written by

Steve Sheppard

 

It’s good to see Craigology continue to grow and expand his repertoire, here on this brand new EP he does just that, this is a veritable mine of musical exploration called Secrets from a Gemstone, and a most fascinating collection of freshly born tracks it is indeed.

The opening foray is one of the most fascinating offerings I have heard from the artist thus far, a track with many facets, and this presentation of solo piano is almost an entire suite of musical components in just under 4 minutes, in a truly artistic endeavour indeed called Rain Drops.

We now move to the title track Secrets from a Gemstone, and once more we find a beautiful fluent arrangement of a combination of major and minor keys, one that swirls through its time signatures akin to a stead moving stream in April, personally I adored this track, the added keyboard structures manifested a wonderful backdrop, whilst the narration from the artists piano is some of the most expressive I have seen in this style since Neil Sedaka composed Lighting Ridge.

A more ponderous creation can be found on this next piece called Regenerate, a more modern popular presentation starts the process of the arrangement, this soon manifests into an enthralling composition that has you on tender hooks just to see where the piece will end up, the art of any good musical creation is to keep the listener hooked, and this track certainly does that.

The penultimate track is the ever popular Forward Direction; a piece released as a single last year, the steady onward direction of this arrangement is well built upon, and the added instrumentation further builds the narrative into a thoroughly interesting composition.

As you may guess from the title of this next creation Eclosion (Emerging from the Chrysalis), we will find a composition that is slow to build, and to a certain extent is true, however the strings segments added more energy to the overall arrangement, and the coda is a sublime pastiche of power and crescendo as the conclusion is finally reached.

Secrets from a Gemstone by Craigology, has to be one of the most fascinating EPs that I have recently had the pleasure of reviewing, the good news about this collection of musical fortitude, is that it makes me want to listen to it again, perhaps to just make note of any nuances I may have missed, but regardless in my view this is the artists best work thus far, and with that said, Secrets from a Gemstone should be a huge hit for Craigology.