"Gorgeously haunting is the way to describe some of the pieces on this disc. Story has a gift with minors, avoiding the sometimes staid and sappy sound of generic piano/synthesizer music and reaching instead for a higher, altogether more melancholy and lonely sound that touches the soul in deep places. A progression on some of the work featured on earlier Story, like "Beguiled", this album is one of my favorites in my collection, much played and much appreciated. Story doesn't get much better than this, in my honest opinion."
Flawless asymmetry
avontorian princess | 01/03/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This CD is one of those rare works that strikes the perfect balance between chaos and harmony, creating enough dissonance to hook the listener but not enough to offend any aesthetic sensibilities. Its sweet and fragile songs ("Sister of the Flood" and "The Color of Vowels," especially) contain that peculiar shade of tenderness that wrenches tears from even the most discerning listener. For those who love to ride a musical tide of emotion, "The Perfect Flaw" offers a liquid paradise of bittersweet relief."
Tim Story is an incredible musician
sv Brigadoon | Dallas, Oregon | 01/30/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"We heard "Lydia" on Hearts of Space years ago and have always stopped what we were doing to listen. Finally found it on this album. The whole album is "stop and listen" quality."
The sound of silence --- a gift to the soul
Javier Navas | Milenrama, Madrid | 08/31/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I met Tim Story long ago by e-mail, he heard a bit of my music and he liked it - being very honest, he just confessed 'as you may understand, the bit I enjoyed the most is the quietest parts'.
I had only heard one album from his at that time. Feeling attracted by the beautiful cover (a piece of art which, being amongst the most beautiful and original I've ever seen, represents the ideal pathway to enter this album) and I purchased 'A Perfect Flaw'.
After a couple of listens in which I could only appreciate superficially the quietness and beauty of the overall feel, I got later on enchanted by what now I consider probably the most beautiful music album ever recorded.
Flawless 'A Perfect Flaw' is like a canvas with only extremely soft colours of happiness and sadness painted on it, perfectly entwined together in which results to be a magnificent, still very simple instrumentation-wise, soundtrack suitable for any emotional or meditational state as long as it's deep. The delicate beauty of each track is uncomparable to any other album even from the same artist and the more one listens to it the more seems to grow inside with no limit. It is just silence in motion, endlessly.
'A Broken Alphabet' marks the intimate and almost secret tone of the whole album, with a reflective piano surrounded by all-colourde synthesisers and wonderful oboe (or is it oboe d'amour??) by Martha Reikow. The next track, Lydia, is the most minimalistic of the album, an endless sequence of sound waves going up and down in a very wide sound environment, with a degree of subtleness and deepness almost impossible to find anywhere else.
Another spotlight goes to melancholic 'After 4 O'Clock', which sounds more sentimental but still deep and richly atmospherical. The next track, 'Liquid Shadow Night' brings the darkest and gloomiest edge of the album, and the hypnotic magic of Tim Story's piano is almost enough to paint the whole scene, although some very mellow synths bring more dimension to the surreal sonic scenario.
The second half of the album brings only deeper, more beautiful, and more delicate and dramatic pieces of art, completing this lesson of pure musical genius and sensitiveness. Thereby, mysterious twin oboes on 'Sister of the Flood', sweet clarinet on 'Rill', hopeful cello, oboe and synthed piano on 'Terzetto' lead the way to the culmination of this small, untimely and perfect musical score: 'The Color of Vowels'. Only Tim Story and probably a few loved ones know why he chose such a mysterious title, but at this height that brings no matter: the perfect sense of ultimate transcendency and deep eternal being of this track freezes the listener's spirit and makes this listening experience unforgettable. Then, as an epilogue, the last two tracks close the curtain, the first, 'A Perfect Flaw', extending the opening theme title, and the last brings only an instantaneous glimpse of 'Until She Fades Away', bringing the rest of the pieces that make the album as cohesive as one complete puzzle (like the cover).
Well, if you don't believe what I've written, or you feel it was exagerated, then you've got it easy: dive into 'A Perfect Flaw'. But please, listen to it in silence, and pay attention.
Track Listings (12) - Disc #1
