[ad_1]
It’s not often that you hear about a concept album based on Walter Isaacson’s biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs, but Robert Stillman is no ordinary composer or musician. His music skirts multiple genres: jazz, pop, experimental, you name it, while remaining simultaneously unique and a bit odd. His arrangements, stylistic jumps, and consistently solid grip on technology make for a curious but satisfying combination that always conveys a deep warmth, a beating heart beneath the wires.
Stillman, raised in Maine but now based in the UK, explained in the press notes that “10,000 Rivers points to an alternative narrative about a man who is tormented by the instability of his reality, so he tries to invent his way out of it. Ultimately, his tech designs become expressions of his will to replace the messy, disordered, temporary nature of the world with something that strives to be barely physical: streamlined, symmetrical, uncomplicated, and deathless.” It can be hard to discern the record’s lyric content, as the focus here tends to be the music and its sumptuous, overflowing nature.
Kicking things off with the title track, the synthetic nature of 1980s synthpop – in ballad form, here – is on full display. Stillman‘s earnest crooning is backed by a gleaming electric piano and crystal-clear fretless bass, and the soulful pop vibes are temporarily (and delightfully) thrown off course by a strange vocal sampling solo. The open, airy psychedelia of “Reality Distortion Field” recalls Tame Impala or Todd Rundgren at his mid-1970s trippiest.
10,000 Rivers contains a healthy dose of primarily instrumental songs in which Robert Stillman flexes his compositional muscles and offers up a dizzying array of genres and concepts. “The Zentrepreneur (Carrots)” is a beguiling take on spiritual jazz, while “The California Ideology (A Walking Meeting)” is a gorgeous, fuzzy puzzle of melodic ambient soundscapes. “If You Knew Him Like I Know Him (Ive)” sounds like a battle among multiple factions of atonal bebop, but with so many melodies tumbling over one another, the result is mirth amid the chaos.
But Stillman is also keenly aware of the pleasures of a good pop hook. There’s the slick, quiet storm balladry of “No Off” (which beautifully transitions to a minimalist keyboard free form coda) and “Knowledge is Free! (Woz),” which apes Electric Light Orchestra’s “Mr. Blue Sky” but throws in plenty of odd left turns, including a variety of tempo changes and the odd clarinet figure and out-of-nowhere brass section. Stillman is revelling in the moments of 10,000 Rivers by letting things stretch out luxuriously, finding odd moments and letting them play out at length.
10,000 Rivers is played almost entirely by Robert Stillman, with the assistance of Tom Herbert playing bass on multiple songs and Sean Carpio playing bass and tambourine on one song. His ambition and sense of musical adventure are typical of his work with the Smile, but unleashed as a solo artist, no genre, instrument, or aesthetic seems unexplored on this vast, open-minded, singular gem of an album.
Source link