Search - Steve Coleman :: Invisible Paths: First Scattering

Invisible paths: expanding musical syncretism

Orpheus | on the road | 08/26/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"First things first: I have to admit losing track of Steve Coleman after the Ascension to light. Presently, after a few days of living with this album, I feel sort of 'guilty' about being unaware of the evolving art of not just his music, but also missing out on the opportunity to assimilate the vast amounts of knowledge emanating from the multi-layered texture that is his music.



Did I loose you allready? probably I did. Let me get into the music on this album instead of diving into metaphysics, at least let me try....

If you digged 'The Sign and the Seal', 'The opening of the Way', 'The Sonic Language of Myth' , 'The Ascension to Light' 'Lucidarium' and 'The Rising of the 64 paths' resistance is futile...buy it!



To some this music may appear rather formal and abstract, yet quite the opposite is true; It is very intense and emotive and at the same time essentially universal in nature (culminating and expresssing everything: the personal and transpersonal). Steve Coleman's playing - as ever confident and relaxed with an inevitable authorative cadence that might seem indifferent, yet filled with marvelous equipoise.



Invisible paths- first scattering: an organic whole of aphoristic sound.

Every track clear and manifest, structured yet continuously flowing.

Steve Coleman's voice, without his formation, expanding the sonic language of myth...swinging, contemplating.... full of acuity, quicksilvery improvisations, as ever resolutely lyrical, his viruosity solemn and reverent.



After A while (this music should be listened to in repeat mode) the understanding of what is communicated will deepen and lead to something which can only be described as the expansion of awareness.

The music has a trancelike quality, at times meditative, at times declamatory.



The word that keeps coming back to me, listening to invisible paths, Synthesis. Integrating rythm, harmony an melody; past, present and future; East, West, North, South, etc. Running parallel in Coleman's work, especially on this album is a spirit of dedicated searching, of spontaneous unfolding - reminiscent of the Music of John Coltrane - beyond the expression of most music: the obsession with the ephemereal personality.



A few years ago me and my friends were invited backstage with Steve and his band after what can only be called a historical event. As we were at the time under the sway of astrology - a friend of mine asked him - Steve still focused on and partaking in the music: austere and contemplative - what his sign was. Steve retorted with an other question:



'Which Galaxy?'





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