Holger
Group: Members
Posts: 1506
Joined: Feb. 2003 |
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Posted: June 25 2007, 09:00 |
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Quote (larstangmark @ Feb. 01 2006, 20:02) | From what I've read Mike only wrote part 1 and 4 after his exegesis course. I think you can hear a difference. Parts 2 and 3 are more dreamlike. Parts 1 and 4 are more bouncy and energetic. There's almost a disco-like rhythm towards the end of part 1.
At the time Mike said his favorite part of Incantations was the beginning of part 4 - and there's almost a jazz/fusion influence there. |
Quote (hiawatha @ Feb. 01 2006, 20:26) | I think it might be mixed. Only the middle of part 3 can be described as "dreamlike" to me. Sections of part 4 are, I think, the oldest parts of the album. |
Wow, this is very interesting. After listening to the album yesterday I felt I had finally figured out that parts 1 and 2 would have to be the pre-exegesis parts, and parts 3 and 4 the post-exegesis ones. I think it's striking how much a lot of those latter parts sound like QE2 (not so much Platinum, interestingly); whereas the former parts sound more similar to Hergest Ridge and, to a lesser degree, Ommadawn, than to any of his other albums IMO. Now I'd actually like to make a more thorough analysis of the whole thing, to come to a more accurate conclusion as to which parts would likely have been written before and after the exegesis, but I'm not sure if and when I'll find the time for it.
Oh, and just to add my two cents to the Jarre discussion - I always thought that the synthesizer parts in Incantations were a bit reminiscent of not so much Jarre but Vangelis - but only a little bit really, and that's as far as the similarities go. It might or might not be coincidence, and I'm aware that Mike's opinion of Vangelis isn't higher than that he has of Jarre (I think he actually dismissed them both in the same sentence). I don't think he'd been have more than superficially influenced by either, and I agree with what has been said that the primary influences on Incantations would be the so-called minimalists (Reich, Glass, Riley) and David Bedford, and the experimentation with contemporary pop music (disco and rock) that he started after the exegesis course, which would have had a subtle but tangible influence on the parts he worked on afterwards.
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