Saturday, October 22, 2016

USA:Michael Heffley- Evanessence (2016)

Michael Heffley | Evanessence 
There was a time in my life when I acquainted myself pretty assiduously with the recorded work of my musical heroes, and with as much info about it as I could find to read. Over the years, most of that got internalized and reprocessed into my own music, even when that was covers of their work. Cover it enough and with time it is completely covered up.

Per that, when I hear these tracks--(unlike others by him that I've done elsewhere, especially on my CD Baby release and Soundcloud playlist "Double Bill Heavens," from which his presence never did fade, and on which my covers were clearly homages to the master, not murders of the Buddha met on the road)--of my statements from the heart and mind of the great composer, I don't know where their creator disappeared to. I do know he was in my ears and mind as they grew and took shape, at some point...but now, my voice and "words" are all I hear in my hands...and I feel like that is what was supposed to happen.

There is a certain edge, inflection here from Bill's sonic DNA--the EvanEssence--but maybe it's only I who hear it: a Russian Romantic melancholy, an American comeuppance of that...an African-American heart, of course, but with a European-American claim on the quirks and nuances of same, leaving the heartier core in respectful deference to its greater voicers.

Also: there's something about the expression of elderness here: the proactive wander free of meter, the permission to ramble and take the results more seriously than younger people do (certainly more seriously than I take their constraints on same)...and to stay shy of aggressive assertion even in the most intense eye of virtuosity's hurricane--and ESPecially the complex integrative symbiosis of left and right hands/brains/genders in shaping the information (a.k.a. nothing)to deliver, to no one...

Finally, I'll just say that one thing I particularly like about tracks 1-9 is the sound quality, at least on my good headphones. My home-recording skill is hit and miss, as improvised as my playing--and on those tracks I got just the right mix for this KORG electronic. A silvery sheen, and a perfect pellucid balance between each low and high note.

My man, Bill Evans--thank you for all you gave me to give back heare.