Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Everyone has a prison, a jail cell or gaol of their own making; it is how they deal with the thoughts inside that surrounding wall that set them apart from others. Sometimes your mind and imagination are the only Freedom Within The Prison.

It is the freedom available to the musician that resides in the heart of a very good instrumental album, the liberty to explore a seemingly endless variation of possibilities that isn’t constricted by conformity and which offers door to the listener to add their own interpretation on a sentence, of a lyric that is unseen. As with any instrumental album, the lack of lyrical restrictions that are imposed with the tracks can make for a two way process with the listener that isn’t available in the conventional story based recording; it allows the listener certain candour in appreciation and to imagine words that might otherwise remain hidden away. Like the great Mike Oldfield, the imagery he presents is unhindered by words playing their part or taking centre stage, Max Rael offers realism, the chance to impose your thoughts onto his music and although nothing ever really compares to Mike Oldfield, so nothing ever compares to Raelism.

Tracks such as Pressing Against The Glass have a spectral urgency to them, a feel for the untold but coupled with astounding sense of danger. Eight Miles and Falling Fast has hints of Genesis’ track The Brazilian attached to it with an addition of pressure buffeting against you from life, family and friends and The Day The Rain Stopped plays with the likes of Blancmange and The Art of Noise at their creative best. Realism, the truth of your own words is hard to find and even harder to share with people trapped and lost within their own cell but Raelism makes it easier to communicate, the sharpness of the electronica coupled with the flow of spurred creativity give you freedom to think in a different way.        

There is a freedom to be had, no one can ever truly imprison your mind, they can damage the soul, they can incarcerate the flesh but the mind is infinite and there is always an escape route to be planned.

A superb E.P. an electronica love in.

Ian D. Hall