THE SERPENT'S EGG

The attention in this album seems to be focused on chants and minimalism. Gerrard and Perry carry on with the same beautiful textured style using multi-cultural influences to paint their musical ideas. One thing that has changed is that most of the instrumentals consist of a small string section and none of the brass from the last album. Lisa starts off with her lovely and distinctive (at least for western music) vocals. Throughout this album, the vocals are taking the center stage and the instrumentals, while effective and interesting, are supporting the vocals for the most part. This is minimalism at it's best. There is some beautiful vocal layering on "The Writing on My Father's Hand" but this track ends too quickly before it can get developed much. Instrumentals do get a little more interesting on the 5 th track towards the middle as tension and volume builds being driven by some pounding percussive loops, but it soon backs off. There is no doubt about the talent of the vocalists and writers/arrangers here. This album, however, seems to explore the minimalistic approach and chanting styles and may not be easily accessible for many people. Unfortunately, most of the tracks are underdeveloped.. Things do get more interesting for the short track "Echolalia" with the contrasting vocals and this leads into track "Mother Tongue" with some very nice percussion that continues for a while and then suddenly changes to a very distinctive booming bass and percussive exchange. Gerrard's vocals do eventually come in with short start/stop phrasing and instrumental passages in between. This is the most interesting part of this album and this song is a foreshadow of the beauty that will be heard in the future albums "Spiritwalker" and "Into the Labyrinth". This along with "The Host of Seraphim" are the highlights of the album while the remainder, while interesting and unique, is somewhat lacking in development. This was not an issue with the last album "Within the Realm of a Dying Sun" which was better developed. However, the best is still yet to come.