Detailed Reviews [Samuel Jeronimo - 2006 - "Rima"]

Prolusion. "Rima" is the second release by keyboardist and composer Samuel JERONIMO from Portugal. The preamble to the review of his debut outing, "Redra Andra Endre De Fase" (2004), sheds some light on this musician's past work.

Analysis. Not much to say about this recording. Just as is in the case of his first album, on "Rima" Samuel runs around like a madman between his two passions which are as strange to each other as chaos and symmetry, namely pushbutton sound experiments and Classical music. Two of the four instrumental tracks present, Verso-1 and Verso-3, both draw me the same picture, and it's far from being surrealistic: A two-years-old child (or just an imbecile), charmed with motley lights twinkling on a synthesizer's board, presses one button at random and, after hearing the sound he'd just elicited during several minutes, pushes another one and sees what happens. Verso-1 sounds for the most part like a couple of bees frozen straight in their flight and generally can't be regarded otherwise than as a set of more or less well-ordered noises at best. Verso-3 is even worse. There are two extremely monotonous booms (just booms), now sounding some louder, now quieter, from time to time being 'ornamented' with rotating electronic chimes, and that's all - throughout the track, which, moreover, exceeds 15 minutes in duration. Do you really consider this to be music, Samuel? Absurd. The other two pieces, Verso-2 and Verso-4, find Jeronimo playing a keyboard sounding very much like a pipe organ, both bearing a certain similarity with Baroque organ music. However the former cut, although varying in pace here and there, contains too many recurring passages (no, not those layered ones we meet in Minimalist music) to enjoy it even from time to time. Personally I became satiated with this 'rondo' already upon the second take. The last piece is basically slow almost throughout, and yet is much deeper, well suiting my concept of good church organ music.

Conclusion. I am fully confident that it's within Samuel Jeronimo's grasp to create an album that would cause joy to many connoisseurs of Classical music. As for any of his recordings that are available at the moment - be it "Rima" or its predecessor either - it would be stupid to regard them even as the man's attempt to kill two birds with one stone, i.e. counting on Prog lovers and those into, hmm, manipulations with buttons alike. It looks like all what he does he does just for the sake of his own pleasure, not in the least taking care of whether there is anybody in the whole world who would, say, share his hobby or not.

VM: December 18, 2006