DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT: KI

A Monday - A monday is the soft and mellow introduction. It sets the tone for the entire album, even in its relatively meager length. This has delicately layered Pink Floyd overtone.

Coast - Coast is flowing and free, breezy and cool. A wonderfully mellow song with some very pretty vocals by Devin.

Disruptr - This song is more layered and thick. It has a warm and brooding buildup leading into an almost overwhelming sense of hot and hateful coziness.

Gato - is a bit more rock oriented than the prior atmospheric selections. It is also the first introduction of Devin's female singing counterpart. The song is taut and slightly intensified, colliding deftly with the album as a whole.

Terminal has such a soothing and nonchalant cry of pale emotion. So warm and caressing.

Heaven Send - Heaven Send is the second duet. Its sustained build up is perennial with an inexplicable air of gospel. Variance is key, and each song has led with a quenched open palm of fervor. A Ain't Never Gonna Win - This one hasa more smoke filled haze of funky blues to salve the savage ears. With those quite electric guitars sliding along passionately and unerringly. Sliding along at almost the rate to slip on the buttered banks, however.

Winter - Colder, but still with an autumnal vestment of cozy clothed warmth. The song is withdrawn, restrained, and quaint. Not stark, but a smooth and windy ride.

Trainfire - With a locomotive drum roll, Trainfire commences and Devin portrays his best...Elvis impersonation? Another solidly smooth rocker, with Devin's key recording abilities to make even the quaintest of melodies artificially more appealing.

Lady Helen - Darker and more reverent in approach. This song has a solid main structure, but betrays the preliminary signs of unnecessary repetition for the album. Still, this is finely original and pleasing to the ears.

Ki seems to be a luring underture to the album in close. It features a mostly soft and accosted rain of wet blue pouring smoothly downward. It fittingly pulls the album into its final stretch before allowing itself to become needlessly repetitious and bland.

Quiet Riot - This is a fun little upbeat ditty. It has the most accented guitars lined against Devin's sweet singing. This also seems to be an unusual nod to the band of the same name, lyrically. Although I'd say it is quite musically estranged. The minimalistic piano motifs are chilling and the guitar rolls, breathtaking. A little simplistic for standards, but fine all the same.

Demon League - This wraps up the album with the same notes it started, soft and honey accents drenched in metamorphic clarity, and musically atmospheric drifting.

In all - Ki is a strange, yet oddly familiar move for Devin Townsend, and an excellent image for projection. The songs sluice together as a milky washing river. Nothing is poor or un-nurtured. Taken as a whole, Ki works like a more emotionally lifting Pink Floyd album, and Devin can sing. He proves much of his variability here. The album does become mildly repetitive near the end, but is a satisfying cup of musical honey.

Best Song - Hard to say

Worst Song -Demon League, maybe

**** Stars.

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