Short Reviews [Inventions - 2019 - "Logica"]

Dutch multi-instrumentalist Christiaan Bruin has produced the third in the Inventions series (he also works under other names such as Black Codex), and this time he has been joined by Theo Travis (Steven Wilson, Robert Fripp, Soft Machine, David Gilmour) on saxophones and flute, the Rotterdam-based DOT Quartet on strings, with narrations by Andy Rowe (The Room). There is no doubt he has been heavily influenced by Mike Oldfield, but the use of (particularly) the saxophone takes the music in a different direction while the very fact that Bruin is an accomplished drummer ensures the album is quite different to many others produced by multi-instrumentalists. It is eclectic, bombastic and very cinematic in ways which at times do remind me of Karda Estra, but far more songs based, and it must be said both commercial and somewhat heavier at times. It is an album which has a great deal of space contained within it which even frenetic Palmer-style drumming does little to hide. It is probably the drumming which makes this album so very different to Oldfield, allowing what can be quite simple melodies be sat against complex rhythms, and vice versa. This was sent out as an EP, but it is still well in excess of fifty minutes long, so hate to think what they consider a full-length release to be. ‘Logica’ is fairly one-dimensional in some ways, and it is this which stops it from being a great album, but as it is, it is still one I have really enjoyed playing, and I am intrigued to hear more of his work.