Style: ambiant, experimental, instrumental
Label: self-released
Year: 2012
Home: n/a
Members: n/a ~ keyboards
"A nostalgic journey..." was the super brief & mysterious bit of PR sent to me recently from Erang about its 2012 self-titled album, the first of two 2012 releases by this one man band. The Erang journey continues with a follow-up a couple months later called Tome II. Tome is a more proper title for these two online only releases, the new trend with indie musicians including myself. These are truly tomes of mini-stories through instrumental keyboard music of simple weaving lines & heavy hit notes. They're fairy tales of another world & another time with wizards, horse riders, mystical nights & songs & dreams ending with a sit down by the dark river. Dungeons & Dragons & Lord Of The Rings & the mysteries of those mythological medieval worlds inspire Erang's musical storytelling. Though, if the dark river is a beginning or an end, I'll let your ears decide. Certainly, that's the way Erang wants it. The music is fairly simple of melodic keyboard lines & light harmonic touches. It's never too cluttered & even when more than a handful of layers enter (for example, "No Apprentice This Year!") they float in & none of them are rushing around blurring any other line. Both albums are very much in the same mold. While the name tome may speak of its thematic nature, the similar sounding tone poem also is a good descriptor to use. I'm reminded a bit of Burzum's two prison albums of synthesizers, but only a bit, as this isn't dark & messed up & full of the turmoil that those were. Those two albums were musical torment, while this is truly a musical journey with moments of dancing elves with their accordions & medieval soundscapes. Though, it's more than just a moody soundscape, as is often the case with albums of this nature, but the tracks do weave into each other sounding like thirteen scenes of a play. Though, part of it is because a majority of songs hang around two minutes, thus while they don't feel fragmentary they also aren't expanded in great directions ... the cohesive hole is the expansion.
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