RAIN ECLIPSE

It's possible that I'm now so used to the Senmuth's sound that every thing he does sounds good to me. This is another album inside his huge production that I really enjoyed. As many of its predecessors it has basically an ethnic Indian flavour, but differently from meditative works like Internal Images, there is a touch of his harder side. Not the industrial metal of the first albums. Just some more drums and guitars than usual in this kind of ethnic works.

"Sam Adh Anam" is a very good opener built on just seven repetitive notes over a hammering bass with an acoustic "guitar" (With Senmuth you can't know if it's an instrument or it's synhtetic). There's a guest vocalist but the site doesn't say who she is. This track is hypnotic and I like listening to it more than once at a time...(the third consecutive time while I'm writing).

"Tat Tvam Asi" is a vedantic sentence ("That You Are"). It's about Brahmanism. The tempo is slow even if there's a lot of percussions. A decent guitar work occupies most of the foreground. Another good track but less convincing than the first.

"Astrotribe 851 C" (whatever it means) starts with percussions and a spacey keyboard but after 30 seconds it's on the Gange river's banks again. Just one minute of indian music and the keyboard becomes symphonic, just to go back to ethnic then it's guiar for a while. This alternance of situations permeates the whole album. The symphonic parts of this track are very nice.

"Seasons of Rain In Mekhong" gives what promises. An evocative track with a rainy background and long dark keyboard notes with some classical flavour.

The "Tsangpo" river flows from the South Tibet and generates a canyon.Local were used to cross it on boats called "gowas". Search for images of this river and watch them while listening. Tibetan bells, ethnic instruments and percussions. Does anybody remember Tomb Raider 2 (the videogame)? It gives me similar sensations.

"Dhanvacara" (I didn't find any translation) is another Indian based track but the keyboards in the background during the first half of the track are very dark.

"Noosphere" is the "sphere of human thougths", the collective consciousness. Give a look to noosphere.princeton.edu From a musical point of view this track is quite similar to the opener. Sometimes it can remind to JM Jarre.

"Nyanza" is a lake and a Kenyan district. This track has a lot of percussions and an African flavour, but in the rhythm only. The melody, if it can be called this way, is typical Senmuth's stuff. I think Senmuth succeeds very well in transmitting a sense of mistery and esotherism.

"Svapna Avastha" means "State of Dreaming". The Encyclopedia of Hinduism says "when the senses are at rest, there is the manifestation of the knower and the known". This is what the western culture calls "hypnagogic". Listen to this track, specially the parts with the guest vocalist. Knowing what is in the author's mind helps in entering into the music.

Respect to the "ethnic only" works, on this album there's a fusion with the metal elements. The album is neither one or the other thing, but I rate it 4 stars.