Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The sense of reveal that is to be found when a person is presented with a picture of the past that has been taken in black and white, and that in which the hues and shades have been colourised are obviously jaw dropping. The spectacle of the monochromatic and its mood of silence, of era’s framed by coal dust and darkness, given life, given purpose in memory is startling, and yet both serve the photograph voyeur with meaning and with passion.
Monochrome to Colour, it was always an advancement in technique that made the past expose itself with charm and enrapture, the stills of camera enthusiasts as they caught a scene in the fledgling art, that have closed the distance to the modern day and its appreciation that all that is different between the subjects of the now and yesterday is Time.
Time, a forever question on the lips of humankind and art, photography, is a way of recording it and holding it to account, and music is its release, a tune created – a soliloquy of beguile that accompanies it as it unveils time as an unfolding celebration of our life on earth; and there are few finer at creating the haunting and beautiful atmospherics than Ed Harcourt.
A career filled with music, Ed Harcourt is a provider of stirring passions and insightful progressions, and in the album Monochrome to Colour, the musician extraordinaire brings a sense of adventure, of memorial, and of cool recollections to the forefront of this timeless piece
Like lightning that illuminates the land in pitch darkness, so to does Ed Harcourt in his expression and ability, and across tracks such as Drowning In Dreams, Her Blood Is Volcanic, After The Carnival, Childhood, Only The Darkness Smiles For You, and the album title track, Monochrome to Colour, Ed Harcourt once again delivers an album of integrity, of the magician’s pulse as it quickens and wanes in time with the marker of each seismic wave of emotion, and that tsunami, that crest of the surge is one that creates the finest aural picture imaginable
An album that is amongst the finest in a body of work that is irreplaceable, Monochrome to Colour is as gorgeous as it is complete.
Ian D. Hall