As One with the Sky By Gregory Cain

 

As One with the Sky

By

Gregory Cain

Written by

Steve Sheppard

 

It’s always excellent when you find an album so good you wished you had composed it yourself, but with my musicians hat on I found much inspiration from the ambient and contemplative composer from Northern California Gregory Cain, and his latest release As One with the Sky, upon it the listener will find some of the most fascinating ambient and electronic constructed observations they could ever wish for.

Starting strong Cain gifts us a moment of clarity and great beauty with the soothing narrative entitled Wandering Curious, gentle synth pads swirl around us creating a cadence so soothing for the onward sonic voyage, a careful percussive element and bass line take us on a musical journey it will be hard to let go of.

The electronic vibe gets a deeper wash thanks to this next moody composition by the artist entitled Full Moon Over Nob Hill,  this is one of several tracks that I adored, and in some way track two of my up and coming release is similar in its depths and textures. Here Cain breathes tone emphatically into a vast wide open range, a vista so expansive, that the overall mood of the track is utterly breath taking.

I’m always a big fan of title tracks, I believe that they should reflect the overall narrative of the project, and this piece for me called As One with the Sky certainly presses all the right buttons, and also in creating a spacious open atmospheric tone, it gifts the listener a sense of ambience much needed to take sanctuary within, and at time reminding me of the most soothing creations of the late but still great Vangelis.

We can now move to a somewhat shorter piece entitled Celestial Machine, this is a true space ambient offering, one that also reminded me in part of the UK’s Kevin Kendle and his deep skies series with its textured synth pads, subtle atmospheric layers, and gentle evolving tones over the course of the three minute plus opus.

The midway marker is reached when the listener casts the rope to the dockside of truly sublime electronic music, with the following arrangement entitled October Dream. This is yet another favourite of mine; October is one of my favourite months, and for me, here the music evokes a quiet, reflective autumnal mood, a sense of cooling air, drifting leaves, and shifting light that mirrors the emotional and sensory qualities often associated with October evenings. Deep, reflective and extremely artistic music can be found on this track alone.

Now for a total course change as we arrive at a more powerful creation, and curiously called This Thing Shouldn’t Be Just out Here, this one has a decided more forceful feel to its construction, evolving from a dream like scenario perhaps, twisting and turning the knife of normality with complex sounds and percussive beats, and reminding me of US electronic experimental artists Hanslik and Moinz at times, in an almost controlled chaotic juxtaposition of a track.

One of the longer tracks from the album is called Give Me Your Tired, the inception seems to herald water sounds, perhaps like the boatman Charon conveying souls to Hades, in one of the most inventive and artistic pieces from the release, at times floating into the realm of electronic artists like Laraaji. Here Cain literally bends sounds and manifests a pace of electronic styled music that is similar to that of Berlin style, but more artistic in texture.

Next in the deeper weave of the album, is a track that is close to my heart, as I don’t live that far from the subject of this next piece, as here in Cyprus, where I live, we have such an area where turtles can be found. Flowing In Turtle Alley, the music, I can confirm is very redolent of the subject matter, fluent, slow paced and wistfully meditative, a title that evokes images of water gently moving through a quiet, hidden channel, or upon a sandy beach, where gratefully the touch of humanity has yet to tread, for me this was one of the best slices of ambient new age music I have heard for years, and I hope one day to create something as beautiful, the sweeping synths evoke a transcendent moment on what is indeed the longest offering from the album at just short of eight bliss filled minutes.

The penultimate track from the release is called An Eddy in the Stream; Cain has followed the last opus of beauty up with another, a gentle sonic movement is found here and one that perhaps invites listeners into a meditative, introspective space, regardless this goes to further emphasise just how good a composer and musician Cain is, as he creates a place in a musical stream where current doesn’t hurriedly carry you onward, but lets you linger longer, and circling around whilst doing so, in tone and timbre.

The natural sounds at the inception of this parting gift called Winter Shadows at Lost Slough, remind me of the tree frogs here in the summer, the teasing synths drift in and out manifesting a truly lush sunset arrangement of outstanding natural beauty, the sonic palette on this composition conveys cool, hushed tones and a sense of slowed time, but one moment that could easily be described as halcyon.

I salute the artist for this album. As One with the Sky by Gregory Cain is with ease one of the best electronic new age ambient styled albums I have had the pleasure to dive deeply into for around a decade at least, its creative, contemplative, exciting, mysterious and utterly beautiful, I would recommend As One with the Sky to any fan of instrumental music in a heartbeat, it has all the hallmarks of something utterly magnificent and transcendent, and could easily be held up as a prime example of the very apex of the new age music genre.