The Stargazer's Assistant
The Other Side Of The Island

A strong piece of advice: put your children to bed, if you have any.

The Stargazer's Assistant is an unthinkable project for a country like ours. Its degree of perceptual expansion, its potential to "reach" our poor minds, its powerful visual impact, have decidedly incalculable proportions. Listen up: there's a certain David J Smith, former drummer and creator of one of the most indecipherable bands in the under-underground history of Britain (Guapo), who, without any excuses or restraints, one fine day decides to take up sculpture. Up to this point, one might think of a poor soul intent on gazing into the void. Never so misguided. The guy in question grabs a chisel, file, and spatula and works on his brain, digging inside and conducting such a high number of probings that he extracts all that is impossible. And it's precisely impossible things that I intend to talk about in this review: if that's not your cup of tea, find another webpage and spare yourself the lexical litany I'm about to briefly recite.

"The Other Side Of The Island" (2007 - Aurora Borealis), is pure madness. Isolation, human and mental marginalization from everything and everyone, and I couldn't say from what else, but I'm sure I'm forgetting some other important aspects! Primarily, the aforementioned work is the sum of "three passages," no stories. The first track, just over 22 minutes long and titled "The Other Side Of The Island Pt. I," serves purely an introductory function: yes, you heard right, introductory!! For a couple of decades' worth of minutes, in fact, there's a total musical and instrumental dissection: winds, basses, melodic and icily metallic percussions mark the time of a sonic ordeal that befits the idea of a high-level cinematic soundtrack backdrop (and at times almost Morriconian). But what is even more surprising is the spatiality, that is, the visual idea of what is being musicalized: imagine two islands lost among unknown waves, connected by an isthmus. This divisional strip of land, separating the two islands from the aforementioned oceans, is called "Transition," and it's a liminal track, designed to connect the introduction to the third and final marvelous fragment of this incomprehensibly fascinating work. The other part of the island, part two (The Other Side Of The Island Pt. II), is the real gem of this recording: unlike the first track, this clears the initially expressed deconstructions to replace them with the most pagan conceivable: a dull and deep feedback, long, agonizing and esoteric, where the disjointed sound of an oversaturated guitar and a piano splits into stereo format to support the distant echo of enigmatic wind instruments, and percussions whose use was likely abandoned since the Mycenaean period. An endless odyssey, a fragment of flesh-and-blood B.C.. A voice, the only sign of humanity in the whole album. Expansion of space and mind, but no damn New Age nonsense, let that be clear to nonbelievers.

To those who are finally tired of the song form, or at least are adrift amidst the incredulous advance of the times awaiting us, I recommend this wonderful and semi-unknown album. The cover itself then, in my opinion, would require an additional review: look at it, it's impressive! And for the record, the sculpture chosen as the subject is carved by the same author of this CD.

Want to take a trip this summer but don't have money? Want to see the Mediterranean as envisioned two thousand five hundred years ago, in its brutal animal-auditory spontaneity? If you can, seek, and you will find what I've talked about until now.

Forget about agencies, because the sounds I invite you to visit are not from this planet. Or perhaps, they once were.

In a time that will never return.