Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
An album that resonates in the part of the mind that deals with dreams, imagination and the race memory of what it was once to acknowledge the fables of our land, the legends and myths that come swarming out of the dense mist and catch hold of our words as they attempt to leave our cold mouths, is by its very nature one in which insists upon being taken seriously.
The haunting sound that accompanies a work of art is not to be dismissed, the ability to make the listener feel the encroaching prickle of goose bumps as they set the soul aflame is to be relished. Too often the public finds ways to ignore the evocative, instead playing safe with the senseless and the despairingly bland; as lovers of music, even those who consume as if it was part of their five a day, what needs to be realised is that the haunting is quite often driven by experience, a meeting of minds between the musician and the recipient, the experience shared.
For Deep Dark River that experience is now a three-way street, where once stood the solitary figure of Morgan Rider, the exchange between attitudes and conviction has been taken a stage further by the inclusion of cello player Nathan Morrison, one that brings out the soulful Blues with a greater responsibility that dared be asked by the inquisitive nature that comes from a fan or loving stranger as they approach the King Of The Forest.
Haunting? Indeed! But there is more to this set of new songs than just evoking spirits and seeing the spectral visions congregate in belief, songs such as Starfire, The Inferno, Doom Must Come To Pass and Bloodied And Uncrowned play with the idea of the duo’s outlook on life, the need to implore that the King of the Forest is humanity itself but one that is a temporary position, for the way we abuse the sanctity of the world means we have lost our perspective, our meaning, we may sit on the biggest branch but what does that mean when we constantly finds ways to cut the limbs off around us.
A perfect match, to take the abundantly spiritual sound of Morgan Rider and infuse it with the duo dynamic, the listener can ask for nothing more, sweet, sensual, haunting, all that you would expect when you go into the forest to explore a new sense of rhythm.
Deep Dark River release King Of The Forest on June 21st.
Ian D. Hall