PSYCHOANOREXIA

Some months ago I was chatting with a musician in Facebook, and we were chatting about musicians being in bands or being full time soloists. I said to him that, in my opinion, being in a band is very hard for some musicians because in bands there are a lot of 'politics' and 'egos' about who is going to be the 'leader' or the 'main star', and that in bands there are one or two musicians who like to dominate the others and that with the passing of time this situation makes the bands split (this has happened a lot of times in a lot of bands, as their histories say). So, in my opinion, sometimes the best solution for a musician to develop and enjoy the freedom to create his own music (or her own music, if it is the case) is to be a full time soloist, to have his own home recording studio (which now is easier with the use of computers) and to do what he wants with total freedom. It is also easier to have total control of the final product (and the potential monetary earnings of his own very hard work ) because now the so-called major record labels are really not very much needed thanks to the existence of the Internet and some websites on which the musicians can share or sell their albums or songs. So, this album is another example of a 'one man band'. I don`t have any objections about it.

This album by German multi-instrumentalist and singer T (Thomas Thielen) is not a very easy to listen to, and the lyrics and the concept of the album are not very easy to understand without visiting his personal website to read them. It has four songs, with three of them almost reaching the 20 minutes of duration and one of them the eight minutes of duration. So, for this reason it is a bit hard to listen as the listener becomes a bit tired by the end of the album. The kind of music in this album, in my opinion, is very Progressive Rock, with a lot of contrasts in the intensity of the music, sometimes being very heavy, sometimes being quiet, sometimes being very 'dark' and dramatic. I think that this music has a lot of influence by bands like Marillion (with both Fish and Steve Hogarth as lead singers, but maybe with more influence by Hogarth, a period of that band which is not very attractive for my taste), Arena, IQ, and Genesis with Peter Gabriel, more in the dramatic and sometimes 'dark' elements. As T explains in his personal website, the lyrics are very personal, very related to a period of his personal life, and the lyrics (as I understood them) have as central theme the loss and grief of significant personal relationships, and how to survive them, and the other theme is a political and sociological criticism towards the lack of psychological and intellectual ambition by some people in the 'modern' world (I think that this is the meaning he gives to the word 'Psychoanorexia', which also is the title of the album). So, as a whole this album requires some 'concentrated listening' by the listener, and to be listened to several times to appreciate it. It is a bit 'excessive' in some things, and hard to listen to sometimes. It really is not the kind of music that I like to listen to very much in the present, but for the fans of this kind of music it really could be a very interesting listening. It also has a lot of work. Maybe it took to T a lot of time how to plan, to compose, to record and to mix the album. The lyrics were written in a two year period. So, because this album really took him a lot of time to create it, in my opinion it deserves a four star ratting even if this is not the kind of music that I listen to very much often in the present. The recording and mixing is very good. The same is for the playing of the instruments, and he is also a good lead and backing singer. Some lead guitars are very good in playing and sound, and there are also some very good atmospheres created with the use of keyboards. The drums sound a bit programmed, but they sound good anyway. The cover art is also good, very much related to the content of the music and lyrics of the album.