Artist: The Dark Tenor
Title: Johann - A J.S. Bach Story By Billy Andrews
Genre: Crossover / Classic / Rock / Pop
Release Date: 20th August 2021
Label: Red Raven Music
Album Review
THE DARK TENOR (Billy Andrews) recently released a new album that perfectly fits into the Genre “Classic meets…”. This time he focussed on pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach. It’s not new that a musicians or a band covers Bach and transcribes his music into Metal or Rock pieces, some people might think they never heard them, but be assured, that as soon as you start listening through the album, you might get the “Aha” moment.
THE DARK TENOR created a ‘J.S. Bach Story’ that starts with ‘When You Roar’ (‘Prelude’) and it’s an amazing introduction to his approach to Bach’s music, that makes you long for more. The piano by QUEENZ OF PIANO perfectly underlays the vocals and the choir is well dosed. ‘Complete’ (‘Air’) follows suit, but the background music sounds quite artificial , a bit cheap and sometimes overlays the vocals. ‘Ultraviolet Hearts’ is an outstanding song on this album and it comes with wonderful intense vocals, the arrangement is quite modern with aspects of Rock music and gives THE DARK TENOR to show all aspects of his voice.
The next chapter are dominated by the three original Bach pieces, THE DARK TENOR used as background for the first three songs.
1. ‘Das Wohltemperierte Klavier: Book 1, BWV 846-869: Prelude In C Major BWV 846’,
2. ‘Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068: 2. Air’ and
3. ‘Toccata and Fuge in D Minor, BWV 565: Toccata’ were rearranged and recorded by THE DARK TENOR for this album and I really ask myself, how the cheap sounding background music for ‘Complete’ could happen, for he did a brilliant job with all three instrumental pieces, though the organ sounds a bit hollow and computer generated.
The next chapter are the acoustic versions of ‘When You Roar’ und ‘Complete’ with a beautiful piano instrumentation and I must admit, that I like them better than the ones that opened the album. The last chapter consist of the instrumental versions of the three opening songs and ‘Complete’ really reminded me of the instrumental pieces that are sometimes being used at horse-riding competitions with weak and unbalanced sound systems. Once more ‘Ultraviolet Hearts’ makes up for this mishap and the album ends with an amazing modern instrumental piece, that comes with Rock, Pop and spherical sounding effects.
It would have been a perfect story with a happy ending, if the production of ‘Complete’ would have sounded less cheap.
Tracklist
01. When You Roar feat. Queenz of Piano
02. Complete
03. Ultraviolet Hearts
04. Das Wohltemperierte Klavier: Book 1, BWV 846-869: Prelude In C Major BWV 846
05. Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068: 2. Air
06. Toccata and Fuge in D Minor, BWV 565: Toccata
07. When You Roar (Acoustic Version)
08. Complete (Acoustic Version)
09. When You Roar (Instrumental Version)
10. Complete (Instrumental Version)
11. Ultraviolet Hearts (Instrumental Version)
Website
https://www.thedarktenor.com / https://www.facebook.com/thedarktenor
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 8
Sound: 8
Total: 8 / 10
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