Short Reviews [Jeremy - 2018 - "Dulcimer Dance"]

Jeremy Morris and I have been friends for the best part of thirty years, during which time I have reviewed many of his releases as a solo artist, with other musicians and in bands in multiple different styles, which meant I always sort of knew what to expect from a new Jeremy release, but this shows just how wrong I was. Jeremy is a multi-instrumentalist, although generally he is happiest on guitar, but some of his albums are full progressive workouts while some of his spiritual albums rely heavily on piano, but this is the first time I have come across one of his releases where he uses a dulcimer first and foremost. If that were not enough, he actually uses both hammer dulcimer and mountain dulcimer as the lead instruments on this album, which in many ways is the closest to Mike Oldfield I have come across from his extensive canon. There is one other musician on this 2018 release, but he only adds a few bits and pieces on one song on this mostly instrumental album where Jeremy accompanies the dulcimers with guitars, grand piano, Mellotron, synthesiser, E-bow, mandolin, bass, drums, loops and the occasional vocals. I normally associate dulcimers with folk music, but what Jeremy is doing here is bringing them more into a laid-back progressive style – providing plenty of layers but always ensuring they are front and centre. It is a relaxing album, one where the listener does not need to do any work but can just drift away on the sounds and in many ways appears to have come here fully formed from the mid-Seventies as opposed to something which is only five years old. This clearly demonstrates that all these years down the road Jeremy is still pushing himself in new directions and us as listeners can only be grateful for that. It will certainly be interesting to see if we get another in the same musical direction as this.