OVRIAH

In a fascinating, exclusive interview for this site in 2007 (see the Interviews section of the forum), Marc Carlton provides some interesting background to this album. "Ovriah" was one of the first pieces of music Marc ever wrote, but at the time he felt he did not have the skills or equipment to do the piece justice as a recording. An early acoustic version appeared as "Ovriah II", a track on Carlton's first album, but it took another 8 years for things to go any further. When he decided the time was right to commit the music to tape, the recordings were reasonably straightforward, helped in no small part by Marc's long time familiarity with the music.

When asked about the relatively short length of the album (a shade under 40 minutes), Marc says that he sees it as an EP or mini-album. Admirably, he says he resisted the urge to pad the album out simply to fill the space available on a CD. The music is intended as a "symphonic portrait" of someone called "Ovriah", in seven parts. "Ovriah" was a character in a book Carlton was writing in the mid-late 1990's.

The music here is closer to that which appeared on "Still" than on "Reflex arc", being generally more ambient and unhurried. Soft sound based colours dominate the early tracks, with waves of pleasant noise being preferred to discernible melodies. As the third section "Ovriah's Distance" develops, electric and acoustic guitars move us towards a more defined musical structure. This development is sustained on the following "Triumvirate", where harsh rock based lead guitar suddenly sends us in a completely unexpected direction. As such, this section represents the musical crescendo of the piece, a sort of apex if you will, after which we are gradually returned from whence we started.

Marc's affection for the music of Mike Oldfield becomes obvious on "Tabula Rasa", a more orthodox gentle rock section featuring lead guitar. Some fine piano rounds things off nicely on the closing "Who Sleeps In Throne Eternal".

In all, a highly enjoyable album of moods. There is little here by way of excitement (other than on "Triumvirate"), this most definitely is music to unwind to.

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