Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
If you are feeling comfortable in all that you do, it could be argued that you are doing it wrong; especially when it comes to art and expression.
Creation should never be easy, it should never be without memory, without anxiety, it has to be an operation that it is filled with tense words, feelings, emotions, it must be demanding, it has to be physically commanding on both the heart and the soul; creation requires sacrifice, and that noble gesture must be Present at all times for the one who is on the other end of it so they too can feel the pain, the delivery, and the justice of what the artist speaks of in their truth.
If the expression is glib, if it doesn’t raise the spirits as well as confronting the appetite of fear then how can anything be considered in its final unmasked presentation as beautiful, as honest, as captivating in its stark unveiling of human emotion.
It is to emotion, to the pursuit of creation, that Paul Iwan’s Present is to be taken not just at face value as an album of genuine power, but one that is required to be unpeeled layer by layer as one would in a forensic operation, revealing each moment of hurt, distrust, belief, and ecstasy, that makes this particular soul bleed an emotional response that is as close to a masterpiece as anything you might ever hear.
To feel, you have to be present, you can observe from a distance, but you must still be in the moment, and that is exactly how the listener, the voyeur, the respondent should be, and as tracks such as Inside, Loss, the sublime Hunter, Underwater, Ley Lines, Further Away, and the album’s title track of Present, that moment is soaked in understanding, it is a flood of creativity that has been endured and seized, it is finery that has taken a life time to pursue, and it is gorgeous and beautiful because of it.
Paul Iwan’s reveal is a treasure, an album of temper, of grit, determination, a willingness to explore darkness as well as revel in the illumination that follows, hardcore but awash with meaning; Present is a gift of Time, and one the listener will not regret immersing themselves into.
Ian D. Hall