There is music. Then there is music created by Ron Trent. The review could end there but I have loved his output for too long to keep quiet about it in so few words. There is a kind of surreal feeling attached to listening to this album, his first in eleven years, because this sounds like everything you have ever heard intertwined with the imagination of how perfect music feels free from all the online noise. That personal aspect courses throughout the vein of What do the stars say to you as if you are engaged in an exchange of conversation.
Upon reflection some of the styles of music which once drew me close now drive me away in a different direction. I guess along the way as you encounter more radical propositions, even if they were created decades ago, that search for the new to you alongside ever exciting ideas feeds a hunger that never quite leaves. Maybe that’s as much to do with life as it is about music itself, all the wild cards dealt from Punk to Acid House – fill in your own blanks. Then again perhaps the already known is where you are most comfortable. It is all a matter of personal taste, not unforgiving opinion. In the difficult process of trying summon up a question it would be to ask if the musicality almost seems a little dated, more suited to the lost decades of jazz-funk. Maybe on occasion such as on Admira Feat. Gigi Masin a sense of that might prevail amid the instrumental solos and familiar array of synthesised sound. Perhaps not so on the engaging balearic chug fuelling WARM. Does it reflect timeless musical escapades, or simply reflect our seemingly never-ending desire for the reassurance of soft nostalgia?
The album obviously is built around a set of circumstances, one part of the artists being, which as we already know has produced some of the most wonderful music alive. Therefore if the cornerstones touched upon here work for you then you are going to love listening to this.
I began the album with the embrace of Cool Water feat. Ivan Conti (Azymuth) and Lars Bartkuhn, then the sublime Cycle Of Many but by the time I reached the end I wasn’t quite so sure….
Release: June 17
https://rontrent1.bandcamp.com/releases
https://nighttimestories.co.uk
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