Deborah Martin & J. Arif Verner - Anno Domini

2.5

Release data:

Deborah Martin & J. Arif Verner – Anno Domini
CD, Spotted Peccary Music, 2007

This release is made by two long time artists of the Spotted Peccary stall. With such an album-title one expects a bit of a sacred record, which indeed is the case.

The cd takes off with the beautiful heavenly & sacred soundings of “Kyrie”, featuring Martin’s voice next to great uplifting textures. Next comes “Spiritus”, which continues the path of drifting, sedative soundscaping with twinkling accents.

The airy vocals on the nicely sculptured title-track sound rather reminiscent of Pascal Languirand’s vocals on his classic album “The Harmonia Universalia”. The fourth track “Vicis Pro Vices” takes off with rather superficial sounding textures, but at the 5-minute mark the sounds start to built before reaching a climax.

The last three tracks of the album also can’t compete with the high quality music of the first half. “Illuminata” (with almost ten minutes the longest piece), contains some distant percussion and soft spoken words but not much evolving soundscapes.
The same goes for the “Dona Nobis Pacem”, setting off with bell sounds and guitar, culminating in a more melodic, still instrumental song, but for me still not leaving much impression. Swirling, David Sylvian-like guitar layers and airy textures on “Inter Astrum” close the album, and although sounding a bit better compared to the content of the former 3 tracks, it stays mediocre.

I would have loved to hear some more bass drones & compositional quality as heard in the first few tracks, but the second half of the album lacks all these elements.
Therefore, this cd gets 2,5 stars out of 5.

Website: www.spottedpeccary.com

You can see what reviews I have done of this artist on the Deborah Martin artist page