STYLE: Pop RATING OUR PRODUCT CODE: 919-13596 LABEL: Seeing Ear FORMAT: CD Album ITEMS: 1
Reviewed by Mike Rimmer
The brainchild of songwriter and keyboard maestro Ralph Dix, 'New Devotion' is a concept album bathed in swathes of solid synth rhythms and chords. However, in style this is at times more gothic in nature in terms of the grandiose vision laid before us. Also there are some of those haunting '80s style big synths to add to the texture and monotone male voices to give it a more serious pallor. Add in a few samples and some 'interesting' moments just to dazzle us and the pop vocals of Lissa and the whole album takes on a huge theme exploring spiritual realities. Mixing it up with the synths are some free form guitar soloing from the third member of the set up, Steve (just first names here!), and you get a pretty broad mix of sounds. However, built into this is that it does sound like it was recorded in 1985 and frankly there are moments when it's ll a little pretentious and I really wanted some of these songs to grab me. Certainly s a man who likes things that are a little weird and leftfield, this is close to being interesting but I was also looking for more hummable tunes along the way. Nothing much grabbed me here. File under 'I' for interesting.
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