#seven crows

Seven Crows

Alex Colville

A picture I did about 15 years ago. on the yellow earth from the black sky Seven crows flew down, playing or eating.

This color usage is based on the Chinese theory of Yin-Yang and Five Elements.

Van Gogh drew "Crows Flying Over Wheat Fields" And the colors are roughly the same.

Welcome to the prog trance ambient rock cèilidh …

Plunger have always wondered at how iTunes (sorry, showing our age) ‘Apple Music’ comes up with their ‘genre’ allocation, after notable oddities like Greenslade as ‘Pop’, Derek Trucks Band as Electronica/Dance and Neal Schon as ‘New Age’…! 

That latter tag is the one they’ve applied to Powers Of Observation, the second instrumental album from fiddle maestro Chris Murphy under his Seven Crows alter ego. Now maybe it’s just us, but ‘New Age’ kind of conjures whale-song, finger-cymbals and Tibetan singing bowls, the kind of thing they put on in the background for your local yoga class… which this resolutely is not!

Having seen Chris do his solo loop-supported shows several times now, it’s no surprise he’s gone full-Mike Oldfield and performs everything you hear on the album - unlike Mike though it’s almost all the one instrument! He conjures a surprising range of sounds and tones from his five-string electric fiddle: celtic melodies and bagpipe-like drones might not be unexpected, but the earthy bass, woodwindesque lead lines, pizzicato-generated sequencer-mimicing bleeps, tweets and twiddles, and rich synth-style washes all come courtesy of an array of guitar FX-pedals. While his trusty stomp-box provides much of the ‘beats’ involved, there are also what sound like raps with the back of his bow to add crisper ‘snare’ effects in some of the tracks.

Most of the songs take a leisurely approach (possibly an artefact of their slow-build looping origins) with only five of the fourteen clocking under five minutes - one of which, Woke Up Singing, most closely resembles Chris’ other, rootsier oeuvre, with a llght upbeat bass-led bounce I was convinced his vocals were about to burst in!

Many of the tracks have a filmic quality, evoking expansive vistas: from the cloud-wreathed northern mountains of Boreal, the ethereal celtic afterglow of Amanda On The Bed, and the spring-forest-after-rain calm of Waltz, to the shimmering caravanserai desertscape of Talk Story, the oriental exotica of 1958 Hong Kong or the indian spicings of the closing pair, Mortal Moon and Narrow Margin with their sarangi-like lead melodies. 

And while there’s naturally a certain consistency of overall tenor across the album, the moods change from contemplative to urgent, wistful to threatening, romantic to (almost) rocking and stylistically Plunger’s (maybe not to be trusted) ears picked up undercurrents of everything from Vangelis to Górecki, Afro Celt Sound System to  Tangerine Dream, and Steve Hackett to Hawkwind, as well as the more obvious folk-roots elements.

Excellent stuff, and ideal for your car, your chill-out room, your nature documentary or Oscar-winning film soundtrack. And I guess at a pinch you could use it for a mindfulness class or Pilates session down at the community centre too…

Powers Of Observation is out now and is available to stream/download here: https://sevencrowsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/powers-of-observation 

Picture the scene: a woman on a bed, shot in a film noir haze. Is she lounging? Is she passed out? The intrigue is overwhelming. Continue reading Discovery: Cinematic Composer Seven Crows Builds Atmosphere And Permanence with Amanda On The Bed