Customer Reviews

Natural Causes

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Steve has embarked on an imaginary journey of beautifully crafted and gorgeously quiet musical passages. The strength of this recording lies on the fact that the sounds he creates become his own through an extensive recording process involving a multi-layering of multiple short musical sketches. Marc Anderson's percussion gives the music some gentle treatment and an overall eclectic quality.

The choice of instruments were key in maintaining the musics' natural form. As Steve plays guitar you can here natural human sounds fused with the music thus making "Natural Causes" an appropriate title. Steve's choice of acoustic piano is something new in his array of recordings as it perfectly compliments the other instruments he plays on the recording: acoustic guitar, kalimba, and bouzouki. Marc plays the steel drums, gongs, and percussion.

The recording is also the first since "Northern Song" to be primarily acoustic and feature only Steve and Marc. Whatever direction they choose whether acoustic or electric, Steve and Marc maintain one of the strongest musical cadences known to mankind.

I'm really enjoying "Natural Causes".

An Easy Five Stars!

This new acoustic recording from Steve Tibbetts and Marc Anderson is well worth the wait (It's been 8 years since his last solo recording, and I'd begun to worry if he'd grown tired of expressing himself with such instruments and sounds). My wife (who is usually not a huge Tibbetts fan) comments that it is "absolutely beautiful". I think it's great too, but not as immediately captivating (interesting or exciting) as his more electric stuff, but my wife is a lot mellower (subtle and wiser) than I... For me this is more background music, lush washes of guitar (acoustic, but still often delightfully tortured in Tibbetts' distinctive way), and layers of interesting often delicate percussions, but without the fertile and evocative sound-scape images of his previous compositions. The short acoustic motifs are familiar from his previous recordings, here layered into shifting and gently surging and ultimately blending patterns. It is different from anything he's done (at least since 1981, when they collaborated on NORTHERN SONG's sparse, quiet almost somber, acoustic recording), and it's a nice change to have these acoustic riffs just continue and build without the more space-tearing, mind-bending, electric energy his albums are often punctuated with. So, in the end I guess we get an older, wiser and gentler (and quietly joyful) Tibbetts (and Anderson), not concerned with making new music (or tearing the fabric of his older music) as much as seeing what lies hidden in the folds...naturally exploring what lies within.

I've noticed a curious trend with me whenever Steve Tibbetts releases a new CD: I immediately freak out at the news, order it as soon as possible, and then wait for it to arrive without trying to learn any more about the release. When it finally arrives, there is a very conscious period of time when I hold it in my hands and wonder just what I'm going to get. It's kind of like in baseball, when the runner rounds third and you realize there's going to be a play at the plate. There's a very fun couple of seconds where you know you're going to see something exciting but you don't know exactly how it's going to turn out. I love that about Steve's CDs.

The other thing I've learned since Big Map Idea was not to make any initial reviews on the CD. Whether acoustic or electric, Steve's music is exceptionally rich. It takes time to digest.

Natural Causes is a definite shift from his last non-collaborative release, The Fall Of Us All. Yet the album is pure Steve; No track drove this point home to me more than "Chandogra." At :18 into the piece, as the acoustic guitar sets the theme, there is a two-note wisp of haunting guitar that definitively sets the mood as Tibbettsian. The rest of the piece features the all-too-familiar mood of Marc Anderson's frame drums, cymbals and other incidentals coupled with Steve's thumb piano and stream-of-consciousness lines and hammer-ons. There is no other duet that has such a signature like Tibbetts and Anderson.

Like Northern Song, there's a lot of space between the notes here. It's beautiful; enjoy it several times, and you will come to see that nobody else ould have possibly made such a recording as this.

Another masterpiece, albeit a much softer one than previous efforts.

The earlier reviews capture this work well, but it's a misconception to say this is Tibbetts' first primarily acoustic album since "Northern Song." That'd be "Big Map Idea," which ranks with "Yr," "The Fall of Us All," and "Safe Journey" among his masterpieces. Clearly a travel document, "Big Map Idea" has a more rythmic, driving feel than "Natural Causes," which is more contemplative and static. But it's definitely similar in being primarily acoustic.

i might be able to say that tibbetts music has been my very favorite. i like most of what he's done, but i love some of his albums - most clearly, northern song and safe journey. natural causes thrills me like they do, in a deep and abiding way. ahhh.

Steve Tibbetts always manages to re-invent the genre that he essentially invented anyway. For those who know his music, you know what I mean; for those who don't, I wouldn't know where to begin, since his music doesn't sound like anyone else's. Suffice to say that he is always at his creative, inventive, innovative best, and this CD is no exception.

Well, I believe Steve had hurt his hand before making his last record, A Man About a Horse, which still managed to fit into his ouvre quite well, if maybe a bit tentative compared to Safe Journey or Exploded View. I see a number of reviewers listing his music as 'Zen', (and who cares if a burp is a guffaw? if Mahayana differs from Theraveda etc....), I think he's coming more from a direct contemplation of emptiness as something integral to sculpting sound to its highest level of pure being. That rings clarion here with the acoustic instruments-only armory, we get a lot of sweet strokes of the chisel, brush and finger-on-the-ceramics wheel.

I don't know, but this recording captures a distillation of what I think he's always aimed for, super-nicely too, if that works grammatically.

Highly recommended.

The percussion by Marc Anderson is apt and harmonious, even timeless; reminds me of Statius guiding Dante through purgatory.

John

I'm a long time fan of Steve Tibbetts and Marc Anderson and I own all of their albums. This one is relatively calm and sedate. It's not as ethereal as, say Northern Songs, but is very introspective, even a little somber at times. Perhaps, like many of his releases, this will grow on me in time, but I can't help wishing for a little more depth, texture and activity. Still, if you love their music as much as I do, you'll want to own this one too.

Easy Peezy - The product was as advertized and sent in a timely manner. I will buy from them again.