RICHARD BARBIERI
Ex-Japan/Porcupine Tree keyboardist explores altered states of mind.
Richard Barbieri has said that due to restrictions imposed last year, with Under A Spell he was less concerned about creating compositional form and melody and more intent on trying to capture in music the feeling of disconnection and “bizarre recurring dreams” that arose from his physical isolation. In fact, he manages both.
This is only his fourth solo album in a career that stretches back to 1976 and the signature style he latterly established on Planets + Persona, released in 2017, was of subtle and intricate activity taking place on multiple levels, with a shifting fluidity of atmosphere and some uncanny moods. Under A Spell expands upon its predecessor’s eerie strangeness.
Barbieri played in Porcupine Tree until 2010 and he has – rather modestly – assessed his role in that group as a nonmusician rather than a virtuoso, a kind of Eno figure creating abstract sound and texture. But while the title track opens the album with a slowly developing melodic theme that perambulates along in an Eno-esque manner, it soon becomes augmented by chattering rhythms, ominous keyboard motifs and the ghostly wisps of Luca Calabrese’s trumpet.
As on Planets + Persona, Barbieri takes guest voices and heavily processes them, producing a strangely moving effect. A Star Light is co-composed by Swedish jazz singer Lisen Rylander Löve and her lonely, disintegrated voice ushers in a soundscape of nebulous electronics, trumpet and twinkling piano lines. Barbieri last collaborated with Marillion vocalist Steve Hogarth on the song-based mini-album Arc Light in 2014. But when his voice appears here it sounds like someone whose words are dissolving as he’s singing them.
On Sketch 6, expansive keyboard themes loom up over trip-hoppy grooves. Serpentine has a more restless, agitated feel as it initially rides out on an old-school drum machine before modern programmed drums take over. Barbieri’s ominous piano chords are caressed by Percy Jones’ purring bass and his vibraphone-like keyboard lines give the piece a chilly beauty. It’s a typically complex mix with all the elements moving through the soundfield in a dubby fashion.
The twitchy, abstract Sleep Will Find You exemplifies Under A Spell’s singular feeling of otherness. It feels like Barbieri is trying to evoke hypnagogic states, then translates the feelings of a dream, only to find that it starts to fade upon waking.
This haunting journey concludes with Lucid. After barely audible whispered exhortations from Barbieri’s writermusician wife Suzanne to ‘wake up’ it emerges, blinking, from the shadows and concludes with a radiant mix of string synths and rippling electric piano. It’s captivating.
HE CAPTURES THE DISCONNECTION AND DREAMS OF ISOLATION.