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The Emerald Dawn - Nocturne CD (album) cover

NOCTURNE

The Emerald Dawn

 

Neo-Prog

3.58 | 57 ratings

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Steve Conrad
4 stars Will you surrender to the experience? Or will you remain aloof?

For me, "Nocturne" is an either/or album.

The Emerald Dawn suggests listening to the entire, five-part work in the darkness, alone. If you refuse or are not able to do so, maintain silence.

Let the music BE, and thus experience what you may find.

Either you surrender to the meditative, soul-wrestling experience, or you keep a safe distance and perhaps become annoyed by the repetitions, the solemn vocals, the slow swelling and subsiding of the keyboards, the guitar keening, sighing, wailing, ever-changing.

If you surrender, sit silently in darkness, entering the night-time reveries and soliloquies, I think you will at the same time begin to dream, to feel, to think, and perhaps in time to begin to heal.

In this extended piece, the capstone is the final epic-length track, "The Child Within".

To these ears, it screams of childhood sexual abuse, the resulting trauma, repressed memories that serve to protect the vulnerable child, and eventually, the suggestion of remembering and healing.

Night-time demons and terrors are evoked by subtle sounds, creakings and groanings, by rapturous organ chords, by drumming that lies in that dimension that doesn't seek to overpower or gain attention, but to support, to add textures and flavors, to flow; and by bass guitar that sometimes stays well below, and other times powerfully enters the fray.

But Tree's and Ally's work develops the heart of "Nocturne".

Their vocals, the keyboards, the guitar, the lyrics, all become the centerpiece, the unifying threads, the direction of this work.

So, do you surrender?

Then I suspect you will be moved.

My rating, 3.75 demons being devoured by the light, rounded up to 4.0.

Steve Conrad | 4/5 |

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