EASTEXTURES OF SOUNDSTONES

There's few to say about this last Senmuth's release of 2011, year in which this prolific artist has released "only" 9 full length albums plus one as Tenochtitlan. On the Senmuth's website from which almost all his huge discography can be downloaded for free, this is put in the genre "Oriental Metal".

Well, who knows Senmuth will not find strange the union of those two apparently different words. The oriental element is always present in Senmuth's music. It can be Arabian, Indian, Cambodian or Chinese or even Russian or Bulgarian but it's strongly present in all his more than 100 albums. The metal and the electronic are the other components of his music and the goods of the bads of his albums depend mainly on how well the element are fused together.

In this album, for the first time, we have a structure that seems inspired to the vinyl time: two instrumental suites (I'd say one for side) split in 4 parts each called just "chapter 1 to 4". Calling them suites is improper because the transitions from one track to another are often sudden and don't fade one into each other so we may better speak of "movements" even if this music doesn't have anything symphonic.

The ethnic parts are in general based on strong percussion and this permits the insertion of heavily distorted guitar which brings the metal in.

Not bad at all, it's a quite good listening but it doesn't bring anything new to Senmuth's music apart of the genre definition and the track titles. An averagely good album, nothing more.