Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
We learn about different cultures, history, and geography is different ways, some from behind a desk cramming their brains with knowledge from books, periodicals and appropriate university-backed journals; others find that the simple act of following any sports team is enough to acquire the knowledge of a city, a town, and its people. Yet it is arguably only through travelling, of actually putting your soul into the world that we can honestly say we have seen the nooks and crannies, we have walked upon roads that now dead civilisations have trodden upon, we have breathed the same air as heroes and villains alike that have inhabited high office and low life bars alike…it is the place of the Low Mirada, where self-incrimination is more of a persuasive admittance that we have places and locations always on our minds.
The Low Mirada, the beauty of introduction, the heart felt romance maintained when you come across the place you had always strived to attain, and in Ryan Traster’s new album, Low Mirada, the right of expression is paramount, but one that shares a stage with the understanding that we are not alone, that we need to embrace other cultures and values of we are able to survive and thrive; and that is the point of travel, of making the journey, to be in another person’s mind as well as their shoes.
How else do we learn stories that are hidden from view, other than searching for them, only by introduction do they appear, and in the finest tradition that is exactly what Ryan Traster has achieved, and across tracks such as Morose Empire, The Seventh Daughter, One Click Salvation, the excellent It’s All About Her, and Fangs, the journey’s map begins to materialise, to take shape, and to inform beyond its years.
We confuse rights with privilege, we neglect to locate the source of our relationship with the world to our peril, and yet at times we are gifted a signpost that will lead us to plane or zone as yet unexplored; what we do with it is up to us, but it can only be hoped and encouraged that we learn the geography of the situation and that of the hearts we have touched with greater intensity than we may have otherwise done if we had only set out to conquer the feelings that make up the Low Mirada.
Ryan Traster’s Low Mirada is released on September 30th.
Ian D. Hall