Magic Box
Bliss of a Madman
Pascal
Tom Maxwell (The Blue Hawaiians) and Steve Denny got together for some loose jam sessions, and, after tweaking and editing the results, this is what came out of it. Bliss of a Madman is an hour long ride through curious ambient rock that makes use of slight melodic shifts and fragmented ideas pulled together and drawn out through repetition and varied dynamics. It’s very impressive in parts, mainly where the music’s loose foundations are being used to carefully alter various aspects of melody and sounds, demonstrating vague transformations of pretty basic ideas. “The Alchemist,” with its simple melody lines, is one of those great moments, as is the punctuated “Trane to Birdland.” Many of the tracks remain a bit too underdeveloped, though, and the album as a whole suffers because of it. That aside, Bliss of a Madman is still an adventurous and often beautiful album of instrumental space rock and meditative post-drones.
Pascal Records: http://www.pascalrecords.com/
