A thought provoking and ambitious piece of music.
Storm Corrosion is the highly anticipated collaboration between Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson and Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt: a formable partnership. The music is a mixture of beauty and haunting moments that would not be out of place in an independent musical film score, and is really a piece of music to sit down and ingest in one sitting rather than be picked apart .
‘Drag Ropes’ has enough elements of progressive rock to keep the faithful content but twists and turns into multi layered vocals and haunting orchestral moments. Clearly the listener is being challenged to walk new musical avenues and allow the artists to take you into undiscovered territories. The song has that air of importance that you cannot help but realise these musicians take there craft seriously. The acoustic guitar evokes sounds like ripples on a lake in ‘Storm Corrosion’ and the softly almost spoken vocals have a sense of despair that at times is quite overwhelming. Then at one point midway the music fades into the distance to be replaced by a series of foreboding sound effects before returning to the safety of a melancholy melody. The music is both incredibly natural and convincing and is a striking accomplishment in music ideas.
There is a more of a floating melody in ‘Hag’ that sits quietly while occasionally beckoning you in, only to emerge from the musical mist in a sea of percussion and piano before it all fades away again and you almost need to pause and start again to take it all in. Not surprisingly the song title ‘Happy’ does little to give you any sense of that feeling and is in keeping with the general more esoteric theme of the album, though despite its somewhat rainy disposition it loses none of its beauty. Ancient music in Swedish is translated as ‘Ljudet Innan’ and this is the final track on offer and is by far the most accomplished in my opinion. At moments the guitar echoes softly like a Ry Cooder soundtrack before becoming little more than a distant hum in the background. The vocals have an almost spiritual quality and you cannot help but find your own thoughts creating a landscape influenced by the profound music. Clearly each person will have their own set of feelings released by this music, from fear and hope to complete confusion.
That really is the beauty of Storm Corrosion in that it will mean all things to all people, a thought provoking and ambitious piece of music that you will return to time and time again.
Ray Paul
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