Customer Reviews

Jeremiades

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The Wim Mertens albums I like most are his "piano and voice" albums. If you want to get to know Wim Mertens' music, you should definitely try this one. Also "After Virtue" is sublime. Although Mertens has created a lot of less accessable "experimental" work, many of his albums come close to divinity. Jeremiades is an easily accessable album with some of the most beautiful piano melodies Mertens (or any other artist) has ever created.
The repetitiveness of the songs and Mertens' esoteric voice are hypnotic in a way. Just as a little thought on the side: When J. S. Bach created a beautiful melody, he also had the tendency to keep repeating the theme, for instance working on variations of a 4 bar melody. A professor once told me Bach had "problems to let beautiful melodies end" or "let them slip out of his hands", thus wanting to repeat them over and over. Beautiful piano melodies are Mertens' trademark. It will make you want to put your CD player on repeat, I guarantee it.

This is Wim Merten's fourth studio album with solo piano and his unique vocal style. He stretches to the limit with the first track, a 23-minute repetition of a 4-bar piano theme that builds to an impossibly beautiful conclusion. Unlike most minimal or repetitive music, this piece shows that repetition can be a powerful device without alienating the listener. The first time I heard it, I didn't realize that there was such a short theme being repeated because the variations in melody and in the vocal work kept developing in a subtle way. Mertens sings in a unique "medieval falsetto" voice that some find irritating, but which is deeply emotional. He has developed a highly personal style in his piano/voice work that likely cannot be duplicated by others. While this is not the most accessible of his piano albums (try "After Virtue" for a starter) this is a strong, sometimes exhilarating album.