BLEEDING

The eclectic nature of some music can certainly be a turn-off for some people. Others, however, revel in that sort of thing. I believe multi-instrumentalist Hamlet Transportinae of the progressive project Transport Aerian to be the latter. "Bleeding" isn't Hamlet's first foray into music, and I'm sure it won't be his last. However, it is certainly my introduction to his attempts at creating new and original music, and I believe he succeeds. I also believe everyone needs to give his music a chance.

Yes, Transport Aerian is quite unique. You will find all sorts of styles therein, from strong riffing to ambient to experimental. You will find really odd time signatures that take time for your brain to unravel (especially on "Inspire"), but you will also find incredibly catchy portions, too. You will hear synthy goodness, but also very raw passages. Lastly, you will hear Hamlet himself, and his admittedly odd vocal style. His accent is somewhat thick, though that never bothers me. He just has a way of putting together vocal lines that somehow fit the melody, but you can never be sure how.

Hamlet seems very passionate about his music. It is music created without any inhibitions concerning others' opinions. He does whatever he wants. And he does it well. One thing I've especially noticed is his deft hand at creating wonderful over-arching song structures, as can be seen on the pensive "Triangle Town" or on the climactic "Winter". Heck, he even throws in long dramatic silences on "Inspire". Yes, this is music with personality, something that is definitely missing from much music today. "Bleeding" is also about mood. You can feel the darkness. The emotion is palpable.

Hamlet also seems quite passionate about his topics of choice. I think it comes through in his really emotive style of singing, which his accent emphasizes even more. His themes of loneliness, fear of being forgotten, and passionate longing are truly felt by the listener. It takes skill and real emotion to portray this, and so I salute Hamlet for his maturity (as cheesy as that might sound).

I wasn't sure what I thought about this album, at first. Suddenly, one day the music connected with my mind. It's genius stuff, really. Hamlet's Transport Aerian needs more exposure, and I really hope he gets it. Though, I'm not sure if he really wants that.

This summer Hamlet's one-man project Transport Aerian has released a new album under the title Bleeding, after almost three years of silence. Just like all the other project's works, this album's genre is difficult to define, as it merges the elements of crossover prog, psychedelic, post-prog and sometimes even reaches out to the area of jazz. This album appears to be slightly less heavy than previous ones and seems more keyboard-oriented. However, despite that Bleeding difficultly falls under the genre categorization, it can be best described in the terms of emotions: it is introvert, mesmerizing, self-drowned, concentrated on the poetry of inner pain and private investigations. This is sort of music which you would like to listen in the complete darkness, concentrating on every sound, letting simple piano melodies flow into the cacophonic noise galleries.

Hamlet's singing is something that adds a special touch to the album: vulnerable, imperfect, ranging from soft whisper to quite powerful raspy high-pitched shouting, it is closer to the poetic utterance than to the regular singing. It is all about emotions and feelings and this is what Hamlet's voice transacts effortlessly.

Despite that album is considered to be conceptual, a recommended song to start with to get to know the band would be Inspire, a 10-minutes long love song, which contains most of the elements of Transport Aerian's current state of music. Transport Aerian is not the music for a wide audience. But for those who still think that music is a speech of the soul, this is an absolute must-have.

Transport Aerian is a one man project which's leader Hamlet is a multi-instrumentalist that certainly dislikes the stylistic limits to his personal spiritual courses. Since the foundation of his project in 2007, Hamlet released three albums until now, with different line ups, composing unconventional, ambient music, with slow, almost funeral tempos which includes elements of doom, progressive rock/metal to electronic pop and jazz tunes.

Darkness, introversion, psychedelism and poetry, are the basic material of "Bleeding"'s creation. Essentially, it doesn't abstain so much of the Anathema' s touching songwriting (emotionally though, I am not talking about the technical part of the music), giving the main role for the pianos, the ethereal guitar melodies and the Hamlet's fragile voice. Surely one wouldn't expect here the usual refrains neither easy-sounding catchy phrases.

"Bleeding" introduces itself with the first seconds of "Mortals" and its guitar fuzzes. The emerging atmosphere reminded me, the 3rd And The Mortal's debut album aura, is an icy introductive theme that balancing between recitation and melody.

Technically, the music isn't so impressive. Simple guitar riffs, background piano chords and few keyboards, supporting the compositions, is not the stuff that you should sweat your brain on to understand.

As I mentioned before, tempos are low in the majority of the songs that "Bleeding" consists of, although a little surprise is shown on, for instance, "Edges", which opens up as a noisy doom / death elegy, probably the heaviest song, with the hardest guitar riffs.

Hamlet's performance is natural, with no pretending. Even the flaws that you could detect in his expression, become charming, giving brutality or bitterness in moments, but the expression always remains passionate. There are no soprano attempts, if you try to connect them with the usual modern gothic patterns that reign the music industry, but when a song demands some more energy, as for example in "Winter", Hamlet doesn't avoid to liberate his voice. By the first listening, a song that impressed me, was "Inspire". Ten minutes long, I'm convinced that is the most reprehensive sample of Transport Aerian music that Hamlet offers us.

Even if on the tracks' powerful points, drumming sounds strong and heavy, their general contribution in the arrangements is low, percussion sounds distanced relatively of the rest of the instruments, but this fact isn't annoying , besides the songs have no need in large amounts of strength. The production is clean, compact, and all melodic lines are easy distinguished.

"Bleeding", finally, is a beautiful, special album, built by darkness and melancholy. Highly recommended to the supporters of Anathema, Antimatter as well as primitive persons, attracted by ripped sludge / post / doom music or simply a bit weirder minds, will be immensely touched.

Recording is very poor and usually it is hard to understand what is going on. The music Hamlet created is very original and worth listening. İt is not repetation of the big progressive bands and it is absolutely unique. I did not like Hamlet's voice so much but have to admit that it is also unique. As I told before this music has to be given chance by prog listeners. You will see many interesting parts as you listen. I'm not going to listen this recording so often since the recording quality is killing me. I'm rating this album 2 stars. With better recording quality and better voice it would be 4 stars. Keep going Hamlet!

New Development Within the Courts of Progressive Rock

Progressive rock is old.

I mean, it's getting really old, nearly 50 years now since the genre was first brought to the ears of the public, and yet somehow it still exists and we have the courage to still call it "progressive". It may have been progressing forward at the time, but as I duly noted in my controversial review of Transatlantic's Kaleidoscope last week, some bands are just refusing to move forward with the genre at all.

Bleeding is a new album from a one-man project called Transport Aerian, and it is a true progressive album. I like to use records like these to prove that progressive rock doesn't have to be ancient and filled with moog solos, it can be forward thinking and exciting, bringing new sounds to rock music to create something never made before, and Bleeding most certainly attempts this tack, and I have a boatload more respect for Transport Aerian and this record than I ever will for Transatlantic.

But honestly, this album isn't fully progressive, by the genre's definition. The tags 'progressive rock', 'art rock' and 'experimental rock' all come near it but it honestly isn't any of those. It's a brooding and dark record, opting for atmospheric and dark emotional passages over instrumental showmanship. Whenever I come across a record like this, I'll almost immediately jump to compare it to Steven Wilson's first solo record, Insurgentes. Insurgentes wasn't my favourite at the time it came out, and I'm still not convinced on it, but it's one of the most ambitious progressive rock records in recent memory, bringing together elements of noise rock, jazz, shoegaze and ambient together into something truly different, and there is a distinct influence of Steven's noisier and shoegazier side on Bleeding, like the fantastically violent ending of "Edges", which draws to mind the finish of "Get All You Deserve", when it shifts from being calm, pleasant music, to abrasive and intense noise rock.

Heavier breakdowns like these also draw obvious comparison to Kayo Dot, the pioneers of explosions and free-time metal symphonies. I'm not sure whether the music here is recorded in free time like Kayo Dot's, but being a single man, a multi-instrumentalist going simply by the name Hamlet, I'm doubting that this will be fully free music, but it certainly gives that impression at times.

Although there are drums credited to Hamlet, most of the drums here that I can hear seem to be programmed, but instead of trying to create a real drum sound with an electronic kit like many bands do, Hamlet has instead gone for a more electronic/industrial feel with the kit, often darkening the mood completely. Like the track "Fog Vision", with the brilliantly industrial snare, along with the ambience and slightly avant-garde solo, it sort of feels like a Lunatic Soul track drenched in Kayo Dot-isms with a Nine Inch Nails kit.

But if I have any complaints about the music here, it would be that it often feels without direction, as if it's just one thing after the other. 10-minute epic track "Inspire", as much as I like it, often feels empty without a large amount of instruments, and the large breaks of silence, instead of creating tension as they're obviously supposed to, just sort of feel empty, and they could benefit with maybe some strings or synths underneath. This also can be compared to Kayo Dot, since their later works have had the same problem in my opinion. Most of the movements of the album have great melodies and backbones, but could use a lot of fleshing out and pacing, since this regularly loses itself in being slow, and actually feels quite tired and boring at times.

Hamlet's vocals also take some getting used to. Listening to a lot of progressive rock, I've got used to many thick European accents, but he sometimes pushes my tolerance of accent and annunciation here. I think if I were to compare it to another vocalist, it would have to be Marco Glühmann from Sylvan, who is well known for his violently over-emotive vocals that border on angry shouting. Hamlet certainly reaches these angry vocals occasionally here, and all I can say is that, like Marco, they are an acquired taste.

Bleeding, for an underground record, is insanely impressive. The influence from Insurgentes is undeniable, but the fact that that style has more or less been left stagnant since 2008 (with Steven moving on to jazzier material on his later solo albums), I feel the world is lacking a band to pick up where he left off in ambitious and noisy progressive rock. Bleeding could benefit from some better production, and maybe the addition of some strings, but for what it is, this is very exciting.

7.3

Originally written for my Facebook page/blog: www.facebook.com/neoprogisbestprog

Transport Aerian's 'Bleeding' is the solo project of a young belgian multi-instrumentalist, known as Hamlet. Just like in the cult fantastic movie of 1962 "Carnival Of Souls", where the main character wanders from the world of the living to the world of the dead, we have the feeling, when listening to the album, to step from a reassuring universe to another one that sounds much more frigthening. The first owes a lot to a beautiful clean voice akin to the "Less Is More" style of Mariusz Duda (on "Score" for example). At times, the timbre is more unexpectedly closer to Scorpions' Klaus Meine (it is blatant on "Nightsky" for example). This "first world" is also embodied by cozy ambiances borne by a somewhat light piano, a vaporous flute ("Inspire"), aquatic guitar licks ("Score", "Nightsky" and "Winter"), some lazy cymbals (weaving the canvas for the spacey world of "Triangle Town"), and last but not least the always appropriately brought in silences. The second world is represented by a chant either angry in a hardcore vein ("Mortals") or haunting in the spirit of Nick Cave ("Fog Vision", "Edges"). Drums are slow in this other world, guitars sound threatening, distorted or weeping ("Love") and keyboards (be it piano, or Rhodes, or Dulcimer samples) quite frightening. On a musical level, we are close to the dark world of Nick Cave or Diamanda Galas, with hints of Neurosis-like post-hardcore here and there. Notes of dry "tribal-ambient" jazz in the line of Torn Karn Bozzio project, and echoes of movie soundtracks, from the piano notes of Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" to the haunting musical landscapes of David Lynch's movies, also spangle the album. Guitars, on the other side, can be dyed with the colors of Arto Lindsay's no- wave, or wander in the meditative and weeping garden of Robert Fripp, or even burst into the excessive "wah wah" whirlwind of The Cure's "The Kiss" ("Mortals" and the closing section of "Edges"). Very personal and highly original work, "Bleeding" should satisfy all music-lovers looking for versatility and unusual atmospheres. Noteworthy, the band was recently signed to the Melodic Revolution Records label and a remastered version of the album is now available.