Detailed Review [Sven Grunberg - 1988 - "OM"]

While the debut Grunberg album recorded on "Melody" got the title of a *pseudo-conceptual album", his second LP did not. Why pseudo: despite the fact that some all-instrumental albums have an obvious stylistic integrity pointing at their compositional conceptuality, any such works should have the prefix "pseudo" while describing them shortly, because of the absence of conceptual lyrics or at least narrations in them. Although we have here the final part of the "Breath" suite as a conclusion to this pseudo-conceptual epic in the beginning of "OM", all the four instrumentals, to begin with their titles, are totally independent tracks, free of any conceptual links between them. I have a strong penchant for great conceptual albums rather than for normal ones. Such masterpieces as "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" by Genesis, "Apocalypse" by OM = Mahavishnu Orchestra, "Animals" and "The Wall" by Pink Floyd, "Never Say Die" by Black Sabbath, "The Graveyard" and the dilogy "Them" & "Conspiracy" by King Diamond; "Brave" by Marillion, and few more I regard as fascinating novels rendered to wonderful music. In adition, the first track of "OM" differs from the rest material rather distinctly. Breath V, as well as all the four previous parts, inhabitates the same 'cloudy atmosphere' with rich, polyphonically saturated sounds that keep all the necessary components to form complicated and distinct spacey structures, a feature of Grunberg's debut. Already in Reflections the listener with headphones looking like an astranaut or a dragonfly - finds himself in a more rarefied atmosphere. After "Breath V" he's jumping from a nebula in some no Euclidian area to a usual, more familiar part of space - with stars and meteors behind the bull's-eye. It seems this album was named "OM" by the author for a reason. Except the 1st composition, already described, the other tracks have, in a way, a really meditative sound with just bits of spacey elements to it. Spacey structures are quite radically replaced with amorphous ones, that surround the listener's mind, and these musical phenomena practically fully correspond to the notion of ambience and meditation. So, slightly meditative ambient structures mixed with what's defined as world music today are typical for the three remaining pieces of "Om". As for me, it would be great if after Breath V Grunberg finds a second breath to continue his 'star saga' with a Breath VI, but it was probably his sixth sense that suggested him to go a different way. Or maybe, our brave Estonian Solo Pilot has unexpectedly discovered that the endlessness of space equals the endlessness of the world, and the number of world music fans is perhaps even larger than the number of those into the spacey electronic prog. So, now it's the turn of the fans of world music to discover such an original and unusual work in this style as this, created and performed by Sven Grunberg. In order to get this original Estonian view on the style please arm yourself with a PC keyboard to place an order to: bohememusic@iol.cz. (Only there can you get a dream album with such a universal word in the title. "OM" is the Queen of all mantras in Indian, though not only, meditative practices. This word personifies the energy of the Only God and, if repeated many times every day, is more than able to clean our thoughts, to pacify and to lead to reVitalization of life strengths and normalize physical and mental processes. Also, the word OM simply does mean Love). More info at: http://www.bohememusic.com/.