Jim Kirkwood Widdershins to the way of the World CDR EP / 1 Track / 31:04 mins Play Sample:   56K Dialup   Broadband Download Sample:   500K   1.5Mb (Excerpt from track(s) 'Widdershins to the way of the World') Please go to the Store to buy this item.

What a beautiful shimmering start. This is far away from 'Kirkwood the dark', just gorgeous dreamy wonderfully relaxed and blissed out stuff. Of course it can't stay that way for long. Strange animal noises can just be heard, then a bass pulse followed by a slow twangy sequence. Brooding moody stuff. The subtlest of melodic motifs is repeated low in the mix, gradually rising as the melancholy increases. A slow lead, again almost bestial, wails its mournful message. A more conventional soothing melody replies. More little melodies and tinkling sequences arrive but somehow things don't become too cluttered and the delicate atmosphere remains. Behind all this is a quite complex track meaning that it can be listened to many times without losing its interest. You can analyse all that is going on as much as you like however but it is probably better just to switch off and let the music take you where it will, which in my experience has been a different journey each time. In the twelfth minute it is all change as a great big gargantuan bass sequence steamrollers forth accompanied by mellotron. Another even faster sequence sprays notes amongst the rumbling pulsation. A blistered lead flashes towards the Heavens. Then, as if we had been hit by a swift but ferocious storm, all starts to calm down, though the sequences still tinkle away. This is only a momentary reprieve however, the eye of the storm I suppose, as things soon take off again, continuing on the same destructive path. Fresh sequences emerge in the twenty-second minute, changing the mood substantially to one of awe and wonder. All sequences then depart to be replaced by a steady relaxed rhythm which itself fades away leaving us with angelic wordless sighing pads. As with much of Jim's work however there is a twist, a sort of uneasy dark edge which lives side by side with beauty and wonder. The dark and light sides to the same coin as it were. (DL)

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