Reviewed here: Tom Byrne's first two albums, The Last Druids (2002) and The Eye Of The Cyclone (2003)
Home recorded in 2002, and now available on Statue Records, The Last Druids is Tom Byrne’s first album and a highly original piece of work, being based upon 6 fragments of history from Dark Ages Britain. These were preserved together in a single annal but each represents different events and people. Although this is an instrumental album, Tom has made a cohesive whole from this material, with an album consisting of six tracks with a unified musical flavour.
That flavour is a fusion of celtic music with progressive rock – to my ears, skewed more towards the former. Tom’s primary instrument is the keyboard, and this is a very keyboard dominated album, in terms of feel and arrangement more than instrumentation. There are a number of extremely convincing sounding synth samples here, bringing harpsichord, tympani, violins, choral effects and chimes to the party. The opening track, ‘The Region Of The Summer Stars’ threads all these voices with dreamy synth sweeps and skillfully withdraws some voices to bring in others, such as a fabulously authentic sounding cello voice. There is something hauntingly familiar about this blend of melodies, layered arrangements and celtic nuances – at 5:25, a piccolo starts up, and that “what-does-this-remind-me-of?” feeling falls into place. The succeeding melody over an ascending three-chord progression reinforces this: it’s intensely reminiscent of Mike Oldfield’s early work (Hergest Ridge or Ommadawn more than the better-known Tubular Bells).
Elsewhere, monkish choral effects and sepulchral bells are blended in with the odd bit of unsettling synth noise, and it becomes apparent that Tom’s music works best when he finds a darker theme...on track 2 (‘The Dragons Of Dinas Emrys’), for example, there is one light, poppy section where the strings bring to mind late 60’s TV ads for a slimmer’s bread called Nimble, which doesn’t really square with the title of the track. Whenever the prog influences loom largest is when the music really starts to function. These prog influences tend to be more textural, with the celtic influences being mediated by the choice of instrumentation and melody line. But they can also be heard in the structural complexity of this stuff: which is at first difficult to discern due to the skill with which the themes are interwoven. (Being almost entirely instrumental doesn’t help much, either!)
The interesting thing about this is that each individual theme is simple at heart, typically consisting of a two-, three- or four-chord progession, with layers of keyboard and (some) guitar overlaid on this. But given the scope of each individual composition (most are over ten minutes in length), different themes emerge, recede and return seamlessly – you really can’t see the joins, and one result of this is that you recognize passages of music, but never feel as though the album is repeating itself, or consists of disparate sections bolted together.
The remaining tracks are ‘The Battle of Badon Hill’, ‘The Great Conflagration’, ‘A Short Life’ and ‘Knowing Another World’ – none really expands beyond the palette used by the two opening compositions, and I came away with the feeling that Tom is better at atmospherics than arrangement, which was basically too celtic for my taste. But this is nonetheless a highly accomplished piece of work, and merits the success that Tom has had with it.
The Eye Of The Cyclone
The second album in what threatens to be a conceptual trilogy, Eye Of The Cyclone was recorded in 2003, and like its predecessor is now available from the resources listed at the end of this review. Tom bills this as a space rock album, but it seems to me to pick up where the Last Druids left off, with the opening passage of Part 1 (the album consists of Part 1, lasting 30 minutes, and Part 2, lasting 19 minutes) hitting all the same reflexes. However, there are a couple of touches here and there which hint at the spacier direction: the Oldfieldisms are overlaid with an additional swathe of synthy sweeps and treated spoken vocals (these I did not enjoy). True to his talents for thematic development, Tom adds some nice harmonized electric guitar parts at around the three minute mark and some phased acoustic guitar, over a reasonably prog / psych chord progression: but the lead voices are, er, stereo flutes...
This is not quite the cosmic blanga that might be expected, although it would be possible to rearrange this track as a Hawkwindesque space rock opus with some additional punch on the bass / drums / guitar – having said that, some rock percussion kicks in at 7 minutes, placed surprisingly high in the mix, and this propels Part 1 in an altogether spacier direction. I would even so still like to hear Tom’s excellent synth playing underpinned by something louder and cruder than is allowed by his keyboard player’s instinctive bias towards the melodic and the harmonic over the rhythmic.
One interesting diversion at around 14 minutes is an 80’s motif, featuring a syncopated bassline, synth lead and muted guitar...the addition of an atonal synthesizer voice a minute later adds interest, and I think this could be an avenue for future exploration. It does not stay around for long, being subsumed back into the main theme, which weaves along for another few minutes, before Part 1 really comes to life after 22 minutes or so. This begins with a new passage where everything works perfectly, seguing back into the main theme again, but this time with all the stops pulled out on the arrangement. With some properly spacey synth voices at the forefront of the mix, it bounces along excellently. In terms of heaviness this is nowhere near Hawkwind (say), but at last Part 1 is really starting to exude conviction and commitment – there’s even a bit of punky thrashing on the guitar, with the other instruments backing off in a couple of places to let it be heard. This lattermost section of the track is by far the most enjoyable, coming to a close at 30:51 with a great bit of wobulated synth.
Dark, treated Gregorian vocals and an excellent bit of arranging open Part 2, and are joined by muted and then melodic lead guitars. The momentum built up towards the end of Part 1 has not been lost, and the Oldfield nuances come across strongly given this more muscular treatment, which includes some good atonal keyboard work. A second theme coming in at around 3:20 brings us more into Kansas territory, although this is diffused by the onset of more spoken lyrics. A pastoral movement succeeds this, Cor Anglais voice to the fore, I think: and as a result, the spaciness that came through more strongly towards the end of Part 1 has now completely vanished – but we’ve not slipped back into the mists of time to the Last Druids. This is a more mature composition and a stronger arrangement. There’s even a hint of an epic Western theme here, invoking the peaks of Monument Valley, Utah in 35mm slow motion if you really let yourself get carried away, even though it’s played with virtually a solo piano part! But Tom does not let the piece drift off course for too long, and brings things around to restate the main theme from Part 1, driving the tempo upwards to close out the album.
Overall, The Eye Of The Cyclone is a stronger effort than The Last Druids, and I suspect represents a further development in Tom’s musical career, away from the celtic elements of his first album, if not quite arriving at the definition of space rock. I am interested to see where he goes next, and recommend that you should at least check out sound samples at one of the following places:
The CD’s are also available for purchase at CDBaby http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/tombyrne
Last but not least, Tom is signed to Statue Records, and the Eye Of The Cyclone will be available from them, er, today, actually. http://www.statuerecords.com/home.html
A third CD by Tom Byrne, I had expected this to be a break from the thematic connection of his first two albums – “The Last Druids” and “Eye Of The Cyclone”, both of which I’ve already reviewed on this site. Tom had indicated as much, describing “The Store Of All The Worlds” as an album of Dystopia-themed songs. (Dystopia being the opposite of Utopia, of course.) However, on the back of the CD case, what do we see but thumbnail images of “The Last Druids” and “Eye Of The Cyclone”, respectively subtitled as “The Shattered God Vol.1” and “The Shattered God Vol.2”. It turns out that this CD forms Vol.3 in the series. Yes, we have a fully-fledged trilogy on our hands!
The CD opens with The Store Of All The Worlds. Picked / strummed guitar and some teeth-on-edge synth effects immediately mark this out as a departure from Tom’s earlier work, at least in intent. However when the main theme kicks in it’s very obviously a Byrne piece: undulating, melodic keyboard-based progressions underpin the startling vocals (I don’t like this bloke’s voice at all – not to be unkind, but IMHO he can’t sing, basically) and burble about fairly amiably and aimlessly until an odd middle section featuring a not-altogether-successful guitar solo puts in an appearance. The guitar sound is pretty overdriven and synthetic in a digital effects unit kind of way, and given this sound (and what the song is doing) the solo really needs to grab control of proceedings and dominate everything else. But that’s not what happens. Instead, Mr.Williams plays a melodic solo, over a minute long, which ends up supporting the song rather than vice-versa.
Phive starts off with a moodier atmosphere, stronger drum programming and another dark guitar intro again giving way to an optimistic theme. Some sweeping synth voices work well here, steering the number clear of Tom’s tendency towards the pastoral which is decidedly not my cup of tea. As the track speeds up and acquires a whooshing flanged guitar buried in the mix, the darker strain begins to predominate…although this track acquires the sensation of being the soundtrack to a mad fairground ride gone wrong – like a confused dream in which a rollercoaster gets crossed with a ghost train.
The Litany Of The Taints (oh, what a terrible pun) is a more whimsical effort, with jaunty melodies and jangling guitars offsetting the layered keyboard voices. The overall effect is pretty psychedelic…but: the singing is nothing short of appalling on the verses. I feel like a heel writing something like that, because lord knows it’s not easy to do. On the choruses, Tim lifts his voice up and actually sings rather than intones, which helps greatly. The Buddha In The Internet is more typical Tom Byrne, skittering along on a mix of treated acoustic guitars, almost spinet-like keyboards and upbeat drum programming. The lyrics are spoken (not sung) by Tom, and quite the best thing on this track is the beautiful phased two-chord keyboard figure placed at the end of each verse, which brings ‘Spirit of the Age’ to mind. The lyrics come across as something of an oddity, which I think is augmented by the spoken delivery. I can imagine this song being much more effective were they sung.
Fifth Generation features more oddball lyrics about televisions and refrigerators, paired with another weird, jaunty little piece of music, and Tim is back on the vocals too. The incidental vocoder’d robot voice is the best bit of singing heard yet. A new wave / power pop chorus is quite good, but aside from that, the uncomfortable juxtaposition of words and music reduces this to the level of a novelty song. There are some better moments in the jerky, staccato middle section and coda, but the increasing dominance of keyboard voices is not to my taste. As with the other songs on this CD, this one is fairly short, and Tom has obviously decided to make an album consisting of concise songs rather than the long thematic pieces he has done on earlier albums.
They’re Taking A Piece Of My Head features a tense but distant synth pad with a vocal sample in the foreground…an effective opening, as with many of Tom’s pieces here, but there is always a discontinuity between these intros and the main themes which usually pop up on a platform of sunny-sounding keyboards. This is one of the better songs, with a really good hook made up of a three-chord progression in a minor key, but then it all falls apart in an unhinged seaside funfair soundscape... To be followed by Mushroom Omelette, which sounds like a country and western number that got spiked with LSD. The surreal and / or silly lyrics (take your pick) emphasise this, calling to mind the kind of brittle, jangly psychedelia of the late 60’s rather than the driven, spacey jams of the 70’s variety. Some good things here are done with an extremely authentic sounding flute voice, and there’s a deft touch of reverb on the vocals along the way.
Three Minutes features another vocal sample, referring to the three-minute warning of nuclear annihilation that was expected in Cold War times. The air raid siren sounds and a terse, clipped guitar stabs away in what is basically a punk song, where Tim’s vocals work quite well. There are some echoes of the Stranglers here, with a stentorian bass run or two, and very Dave Greenfield-ish keyboards, broadening out into a middle eight solo. It’s a shame the song doesn’t last three minutes but you can’t have everything.
Grey Goo is musically the strongest song on the CD, featuring some snappy chord progressions, again at a pace that’s pumped up to New Wave speeds, but once more the simply dreadful vocals, and lyrics that are frankly little better, wreck any hopes this had of turning into a really decent song. What a shame, since the keyboard solos are pretty good, and then at last, the single best bit of music on this CD appears in the form of Michael Blackman’s guitar solo: the first one, which soars. He adds a second solo which is more low-key, and after some more keyboard soloing, comes back for a third bite at the cherry. Basically the coda to this number is about five minutes long and consists of alternating lead passages on guitar and keyboard. Again, I think there’s a Stranglers influence at work, and I was reminded of the coda to ‘Down In The Sewer’ on their first album. I enjoyed this last five minutes of Tom’s album, which is more than I can say for just about everything that preceded it.
So, there may be a conceptual connection with Tom’s two earlier albums, but musically this could scarcely be more different. Gone are the lengthy instrumental developments and celtic elements: instead it appears that Tom has opted to do something completely at odds with those ideas, turning in an album which is basically an attempt to crank out short New Wave-influenced pieces in keeping with the Dystopia theme. I have to say, I think it did not work at all. There would be a number of reasons for this, and the main one is perhaps that Tom’s style of composition does not lend itself to short songs as against extended development of themes. Secondly, I think the people with whom he chose to collaborate did not work out (this would include the lyricists, where the words were written by contributors rather than by Tom himself) - although Michael Blackman is exempted from this criticism.
There were some moments along the way that had real quality to them, but despite being Volume 3 of the Shattered God, this album is after all a side-trip in Tom’s career. The definitive Tom Byrne album is still out there, waiting to be captured and recorded, but this isn’t it.
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