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As a music lover I've always been partial to compilations, it's like a musical pinata: you never know what you're going to get but chances are there's at least one goodie inside.
As a music reviewer I dread them.
What can you say about a compilation? While it's true that there's bound to be something good on the collection, the chances that some cringe-worthy songs will appear is pretty high as well.
In the end reviews of compilations usually come down to this:
They're uneven. "I liked song X, hated song G. In between there was a bunch of filler."
Yet, somehow, "Odyssey of Rapture" succeeds where other collections fail.
Mythical Records pinged onto my radar a while back with their release of Abandoned Toys' "The Witch's Garden" (an album I quite enjoyed). So I knew that "Odyssey of Rapture" was promising. The front cover blurb promises "A fusion of contemporary classical, ambient and world music."
I had to wonder could a compilation really be a "fusion"? A band can be a fusion, a song can be a fusion... but a compilation?
As I said "Odyssey of Rapture" succeeds where other compilatons fail: it is *not* uneven.
It may, in fact, be the most consistant collection of artists I've heard. For this reason alone it must be marked down as a victory.
You can hear wafts and breezes of neo-classical, lovely avant-electronics, hints of ambient and new age not just on this collection as a whole but on each song *individually*. This gives these pieces a unified feel as if a set of musicians worked together on each song... as if this is one band an each song reflects different aspects/moods there-of.
This is what good musical curation soungs like, well done.
Track Listing:
1. David Reyes "The magic woods"
2. Library Tapes "The rivers turned to cobblestone"
3. Abandoned Toys "An expanding tremble"
4. Ephemeral Mists "A pale slumber"
5. Phanatos "Voyage (quest for the shores of aphrodite)"
6. Aranis "Vala"
7. The new pollutants "Kidnap theme"
8. Hana (Jeff Greinke & Anisa Romero) "Hide"
9. Michel Avannier "La rencontre"
10. The synthetic dream foundation w/ Hannah Fury "Trapeze"
11. MePhI "Crystal night"
12. Aonua "Spirit of the deep"
13. Fiona Joy Hawkins "Contemplating"
14. Samantha Bouquin "Tale for a sunken moon"
15. Scythelence "Transparent eyelids"
16. Enigma de Ultratumba "To my unrest"
17. Samanta Ray & Pete Ardron "Interuterion 3"
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Mythical Records:
http://mythicalrecords.com/
Odyssey of Rapture:
http://mythicalrecords.com/albums/odysseyofrapture.htm
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