Growing Concern - Endless Landscapes mp3 album

This is an album of mixed sounds, ranging from New Age to Medieval to Space Rock. GROWING CONCERN are a Cornish duo consisting of SIMON COOPER on keyboards, recorders & accordian, and PHIL WEBB on keyboards, Classical & Electric guitars. "Morning Air...Evening Shadow" is a varying little instrumental with a composed New Age feel to it, ethereal keys pushed into a tuneful motif of warm sounds. "The Storm" builds up out of the accordian sound, a thin thing with reverse FX & strange synthetics foretelling the coming of a downpour of rain. Artificial thunder joins in, before a delicate chiming series of almost harp-like ripples rises out of the rain-blessed Earth, a calm, serene little instrumental with acoustic guitar tucked away discretely amidst the huge keyboards. "The River" comes next, with almost whale-song sounds floating over a passive grinding machine sound (New Age Industrial?) before electric guitar scrawls small tight images under it's dermis. It changes with percussive xylophone-like rhythm & large sweeps of keyboards, becoming an altogether more passive, reflective sound. "The Reef" is a short relaxing thing which grows up out of a white noise wave sweep. A quiet, reflective track, more a calming wallpaper than a piece of music. The 'B' side begins with "Ice Dance", an easy-listening thing with Classical guitar & piano sounding like a slightly Jazz-influenced mellowed-out variation on JAPAN's "Nightporter" with Continental bloodless calm. "Paris Bridge At Midnight" does suggest a pre-conceived image of that Dream City, with the accordian's thin-yet-rich sound swelling up in bright layers, mixing with similarly-textured keyboards. "Mirage Church" combines a keyboard interpretation of a single chiming bell, along with white noise & other synthetic sounds before becoming a mellow dream-state piece of music with odd pitch changes & distinctive tune which rises here & there. "Echoes Of The Court" has a strong Baroque flavour to it, with overlayered recorders & spinet-like keyboards, yet manages to keep it's tune somehow in the 20th century. The next piece follows suit with a more full, rich sounding version of the previous track with guitar adding to the sound, giving it more body. The third part under this title has a similar musical influence, along with a sort of Spanish Guitar sound. This is solo guitar with the background of running water and has so many tuneful devices that you seem to spot a half-dozen tunes within it's own complex composition. "Red Moon Tor" is mainly built on a series of recorder rhythms under which the keyboards swell & the guitar starts to strum it's way into a fine tune. It twists & turns, complex in composition yet seemingly at ease with itself, changing from solo guitar to sweeping keyboards, it adds a Jazz edge & some nice, benign tension to it's New Age sound, a fittingly quiet way to close an album which comprises musical talent, compositional prowess & an easy, pacifying sound. SIMON COOPER has a solo CD called "Together" out on Dutch New Age label OREADE.Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.