CERULEAN BLUE

"Cerulean Blue" ' of RAIN is at the least a very remarkable cd in different ways. There is not so much information about the man (he has some 'ambient' compositions on his account), but it's a fact that he plays almost all instruments, he has written all the music and the lyrics, he has conceived the artwork and he has also founded his own record label. And apparently he has released a poem cord, it appears to be too much for one human being.

The cd contains seven tracks, all of them introduced by Rob Brown, telling in a magnificent way the story of young man Rick on his travel through America. He's accompanied by a string quartet and numerous sound effects, you must have understood that this is all about progressive rock in the vein of the seventies, ambient, psychedelic, very melodic. References to early GENESIS and PINK FLOYD seem to be obvious.

The 'Lammas Lands' puts the tone, dark, melodramatic, beautifully sung, the drums gives the track some more energy. 'Parsifal' is being led by an intriguing saxophone and a choir. In the excellent 'The Silver Apples of the Moon' there are a lot of FLOYD elements, but vocally it tends more towards BLACKFIELD, which is not really a coincidence, as this album can be compared with 'Voyage 34' of PORCUPINE TREE, as well on a musical basis as for the concept. Sometimes the music has a Celtic touch like in 'Jerusalem'. Fairly impressive is also the accompanying movie "Ashes", with a frightening Rob Brown, truly a charismatic guy.

Don't expect musical-technical highlights (there are not so many solos), soundscapes are more important in this kind of music, an atmosphere is being created throughout the entire album, and RAIN succeeds wonderfully. Therefore, you should carefully listen to the music (and you have no excuse not to do it, like you will read hereafter). Just dim all the lights, switch on a candle and let the music overwhelm you, if you are in a romantic mood, you will love it.

TelosMusic, the label of RAIN, has been founded to distribute and promote his own music. It is very special that he has made available the entire cd without any costs on his website, you can download all tracks (albeit in a modest quality of 96kbps). The idea of the artist goes as follows: 'it is impossible to prevent people from copying music, they have done it already for years and studies have demonstrated that people, downloading illegally from the internet, are buying six times more cds than the average consumer (!). Therefore it is better to give the consumer the opportunity to let him discover the music by means of the internet, if he likes it, he will be prepared to buy the cd with the highest quality with all the extras (artwork, movies, lyrics, a.o.)'. Not all the artist will agree with him, but it is a laudable initiative. It will give a totally different view on the distribution of music in the future. Think about it. and in the meantime you can download the entire cd here and decide if this music is appealing to you. You can buy it for only 8.5? (incl. shipment costs)

Review by Claude 'Clayreon' Bosschem