Dengler’s complexity and innovative craftsmanship take the listener into a new musical experience, inviting dreams and providing a healthy relief from stress.
A garden of spiritual themes
Floating music for dreaming, do you believe in an afterlife? Consider the vanishing moment we call life. What might await people when they die, facing the music, is there a life review period occurring immediately after death? Does one automatically qualify for a better world to come? Are there other openings to other phenomena relating to spiritualism and the afterlife? If the heart was lighter than the feather, can music somehow allow a listener to enter heaven alive?
The music of The After opens a garden of spiritual themes, such as transfiguration, the good life, an important connection with the soil, as well as with the concept of afterlife itself. The cello is divine, the innovative vocals are astonishing, the use of natural sounds is subtle, the sound is always changing; the ride is smooth. The rich detailed landscape keeps changing so that there is always something new happening. One might reconsider the afterlife, in heaven for example, a place that some would say begins after death.
The music fades in with an interlocking melodic phrase that morphs perfectly along, the feeling is full without being dense, and with plenty of interesting odd sounding elements visiting the mix, “Extremophile” (6:53). This is an entrance into a strange new world, the sonic landscape continues to actively blossom as the imaginary hills go traveling by. For a while the beat gets stronger and weaves interesting textures throughout the calming flow. With Paul Brantley on cello, “Mirrored Moss” (7:51) begins with a dark and humid atmosphere, the cello elevates the dynamic direction towards a glowing and creaking distant high mountain. The third track has moments that might be a little disturbing, and rather fascinating at the same time. “Silent Veil” (7:01) with vocalist Cynthia Cook has echoes and whispers with a vast array of musical and vocal expressions. “The Harvest” (5:40) also with Paul Brantley on cello, could be an ode to autumn, an upbeat tempo that is light and energizing with an array of wonderful strange sounds bubbling in the mix.
Experience calming with no fear or tension ::
Now swaying tones, water sounds flowing and sparkling, a calming dreamscape with night frogs, and spring energy. The concluding tracks sustain and powerfully expand the album’s purposeful transformative flow, “Preparation” (8:23) takes place at night, my ears weave an insect sound with brass gongs, I know there are frogs in the darkness and a darkly sparkling synthesizer. Experience calming with no fear or tension, there are water sounds and an ethereal singer or chorus, leading into layers of details, I hear a carousel of wonderment with more new gentle creatures of the night, swaying tones for riding into a calming dreamscape.
Cremation is a “Gift to the Fire” (8:59), the feeling starts low and slow with a glowing bass, a building beat flickers forth and sustains upon a gong drone and wondrous calming electronica. Within a steady moderately animated tempo some new moments emerge, new instruments speak and now a band of instruments has emerged, with hand percussion and various keyboards. Steadily the feeling builds as new elements come and go, down the row a calming gong replaces the beat and the flow continues away leaving long reverberations.
“Tomorrow’s Halls” (7:06) brings together slow and calm reflective layering, long sustained notes with night sounds that purr, the organ increasingly emerges until a plateau is reached, I want to call this a memorial feeling, long sustained tones for imagining through time and space and leads inevitably into “The After” (12:14), the title track with a sound that is wispy and delicate, sometimes glowing in radiant glory. I find the musical feeling to be calming and nourishing, sustaining ethereal voices enfolded in warm silky sounds, always unusual and compelling. A calming and fragmented melody, with emerging new forms, new instruments and layers, the flute brings the crown to wear. Yet nothing is solid, all is vapor and light, gently flickering balls of many colors, constantly changing.
Carlos Dengler is a NYC-based composer, actor, writer, and multi-instrumentalist (guitar, bass guitar, and piano). He is also an amateur nature photographer, avid backpacker, and a naturalist. Dengler has self-released three albums as a composer of New Age/ambient music, Aqueduct and Ecospheres in 2022 and Private Earth in 2023. Dengler’s complexity and innovative craftsmanship take the listener into a new musical experience, inviting dreams and providing a healthy relief from stress.
Album cover design by Nathan Youngblood. Mastered By Rich Morales @ Superfine Audio.
The After is available on Bandcamp.
