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Review: 'K, Paul'
'Omerta'   

-  Album: 'Omerta' -  Label: 'Basilica Music'
-  Genre: 'Soundtrack' -  Release Date: '25th November 2016'

Our Rating:
It’s been quite a year for Paul Kirkpatrick. As one half of Glitch Code, he’s delivered a noteworthy debut album in the form of ‘Gifted_Damaged’. ‘Omerta’, a solo offering, reflects a very different aspect of Kirkpatrick’s musical capabilities: while ‘Gifted_Damaged’ is sits firmly in the realm of tense, dark electronic pop, this instrumental work is more cinematic, more calm, and while it’s not without popworthy musical hooks, errs at times toward the more progressive end of the rock spectrum.

The cinematic feel makes perfect sense in context of Paul’s own outlining of the album’s theme and development. He writes, ‘“Omertà” is a code of honor that places importance on silence, non-cooperation with authorities, and non-interference in the illegal actions of others. A film. A soundtrack. But what if you flipped the whole creative process on its head and created the sonic work first and then produced a film around it? The titles of the tracks become the plot guides for the film. That is how I imagined the “plot” for the album.’

The titles do, indeed, suggest a certain narrative thread: structured enough to indicate an arc, but vague enough to allow the listener to fill the spaces with their own ideas. This carries into the music: the compositions, and the arrangements which serve to accentuate their ‘meaning’ dictate the mood, but leave an open space for the listener to project their own scenes. In classic style, the first track is the ‘Intro’ version of the title, the theme, as it were, and with a slow, gentle build, introduces the stylistic tropes which will recur throughout the work as a whole. It creates a subtle drama, and is laced with an elegant bittersweetness as piano and strolling bass fade in a cascade of electronic chimes.

In keeping with the project’s objective, the tracks are comparatively understated, and shift between light and soft, and darker, more dynamic and tense compositions. Following the expansive, drum-driven ‘Chronicle’, ‘Ashes in the Snow’ is downtempo, melancholic, and laced with brooding, mournful strings. The sparse, delineated Krautrock of ‘Isolation’ is practically a story in its own right, while ‘Neon Gods’ blossoms with a cascade of strings over a stealthy bassline that calls to mind the style of early Duran Duran with evocative results. The album plays out with ‘Omerta (Reprise)’, which neatly bookends the 18-track sequence in fine and uplifting style

Kirkpatrick has a real knack for making music the listener feels, and ‘Omerta’ is an impressively nuanced, detailed work.

Paul K Online

  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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K, Paul - Omerta