Diabolical Desolation - Centinex

Advantages: An album of beauty matched with menace
Disadvantages: Will not be accessible too most

...Desolate has never been such an apt description for an album. Zan Lyons has created an astonishing album where dark strings merge with devastating beats to create a musical voyage into a world of punishing beauty. It starts quietly with a slow build of ambient sounds, relaxing but unnerving the listener before the beats crashing in like large waves whipped up by a sonic hurricane. For there onwards you are taken on a mesmerising and devastating journey into the mind of a young man (Zan is still in his teens) with a unique and uncompromising musical vision. On initial listening Desolate can seem a very cold harsh experience, but given repeated listening you realise there is a hidden beauty contained the glacial sounds and thundering beats. There an real direct comparisons to be made to Desolate , only the works of Biosphere (for... Read review

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Advantages: Astounding sound, amazing music
Disadvantages: none

..., it happened to Oasis after two albums! Some bands eventually make their way out of the “rock doldrums” and some just disappear under the deadweight of their own fading reputation. Brave New World is an album that farts in the face of anyone who says that was the way that Iron Maiden was going. ...THEN A HISTORY Picture a young boy on the cusp of puberty, the joys and sorrows of adulthood as yet blissfully unknown to him. He’s tucked up in bed tuning in his portable transistor radio that’s shaped like a walkie talkie, combing the waveband known only as “FM Air” listening for messages from outer space, or at least the Police radio. All of a sudden he hears a dark and chilling voice (who we later learn is Vincent Price) reciting passages out of the bible that talk of diabolical deeds, and by the end of “The... Read review

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Advantages: Rare instrumental genius
Disadvantages: The CD uses a mix in which a repetitive bass riff is pushed to the fore rather than the original vinyl mix.

...On first hearing this is slightly annoying and completely forgettable. I first bought this on vinyl (second hand) for £1.10 and when I got it home and played it I thought it was a waste of money, and yet I keep going back to it. Heard as a musical description of a landscape, a soundtrack for a cold, desolate, weather-beaten place, it lives. It can also be heard as a musical evocation of the turbulence of a troubled mind. Near the end of side one, there is a melody played on an oboe which is truly sad. It evokes an image of a lost soul roaming a desolate hillside pining for company. The musical storm sequence in part two is breathtaking in its passage from steadily building violence to a sudden, beautiful, lull. You can almost feel the rain, gently at first, heavier as the wind picks up until the storm batters your senses and you... Read review

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