A light green ambient cityscape where tall Victorian styled buildings reach the sky. A slightly distorted visual collage of trees and traffic down below.  MOVEMENTS in big block letters. M o v e m e n t s, I say slowly and think about this word.  It leaves much to the imagination. I love a mystery and from the cover of this album and the thought provoking one word title… I think a mystery is what I might have in my hands here.

I hit play and the first thing that reaches my ears is a symphony of digital rain drops coming from all directions. After about 30 seconds of this downpour, rich synth chords float across the sky, tabla beats kick in with a killer guitar lead. This song is only building and building into a monster of a jam and not at all what I had expected from the first few seconds. With every turn of this tune something new is introduced in the mix. I’m loving this and now I’m guessing what the next song is going to bring and what this promising album is going to become.

I continue to listen to Movements closely and each track surprises me with new sounds of ambience, soft noise, progressive rock, classically composed guitar, eastern instrumentation and experimentation. Something I notice right away is that one track runs into the next like an audible collage. I personally love this style of recording and producing an album, and I like to listen to an album like reading a book, with one chapter after another.  The intros and outros weave their way in and out of each song and are masterfully crafted, and extremely experimental in nature.  Something that I really like about Movements is the world instrumentation that is added. It’s a shame that such stylings are hugely ignored by modern western music.

I start to close in on the last few minutes of Movements and I can visualize myself dropping in on this faded green cityscape passing each cloud and then every window on my downward descent to the ground below.  I get closer and people and cars come into clear focus.  Now, I can even hear their voices and street noise and sounds of a bustling metropolis.  These are the sounds of life, and PHWG has placed an excellent sample of these things at the very end of Movements.  The final goodbye… until the next album.  Maybe a trip around the city?

After listening to Movements in its entirety and reflecting on the album, I have decided that this doesn’t easily fit into any standard genre, and that is a really good thing.  I’ve stopped trying to analyze why I like certain music types or even more, certain bands or artists.  I come up with a blank page. A great album has to have something extra to really grab and hold my attention. Something a little different. Something that makes me want to press play or put the needle back on the groove. I think that is why I enjoy Movements so much.  It is definitely a rock album at heart but is equal parts of so much more.

Review by Kenn Deaton

Kenn Deaton, Reviews Movements, PHWG, Pontus Gunve