Here's a review of my album Ceastra..,
Review by: Reed Burnam
Ambitious, competent, and symbolically rich, Jerence Barker’s debut solo disc Ceastra is a listen a bit unlike anything you’ve most likely heard prior. There’s a deep philosophical and exploratory vein running the length of Barker’s work, which is arranged as an instrumental suite, attempting to bring the listener along on a journey of self-discovery that elevates Ceastra to somewhere just above everyday musical fare. Taken in tandem with the road map to the movement of the suite Barker lays out on his website, the album becomes a window into the artist’s own self-mediated deconstruction, and the listener is free to both travel down the path with Barker or else inject the experience with a bit of self-reflexive identification…I mean, we’re talking about life, love, and death here, right? Still, despite the heady subject matter, Ceastra is overall a fun, eclectic, and unpredictable listen that bends around the contours of what one might expect. But then again, when you get down to it, life has a habit of remaining stubbornly unpredictable, and (hopefully) we wouldn’t have it any other way.
As per Barker’s description, the word “ceastra” comes through Old English from the Latin term for fortified encampment, walled city, or castle. Filtered through the lens of the aim for the album itself, one can imagine it to suggest the sense of every human being as a type of repository or walled place in and of themselves, a solitary encampment on a larger expanse of ground upon which rests others. In Barker’s words, “the album Ceastra is about remembering, and memory.” As such, the album’s twelve tracks are arranged on an axis that recounts a linear, remembered path from the pre-origins of the artist as an individual, through the kaleidoscopic ambitions and distractions of life itself and its eventual dissolution, and out into the post-death event horizon. The scope is pretty ambitious, and one might wonder if the music itself might suffer from the grandiose machinations of the philosophy underpinning it. However, the art holds up even without the back story, and as a result Ceastra comes across as listenable on its own merits in spite of the other pieces of the story, which the listener can contemplate at will.
Ceastra’s arrangements and musicianship speak to Barker’s musical past, which is long and diverse, as well as his influences, which range from Stravinsky and Bach, to Yes, Mike Oldfield, and Todd Rundgren. Though Ceastra’s twelve tracks clock in at just over twenty-five minutes, there’s a lot going on to digest. Individual pieces of the larger suite range in tinge and tempo from ambient layering (“Memento Vivere”) to 70’s lite-funk and prog (“Effem”), jittery runs ala Danny Elfman (“Gokwitis”), disco-esque space-age dancefloor struts (“52”), and soothing, spacey piano elegies (“Transition”), all of which suggest and reinforce Barker’s interweaving of his own personal narrative into the album’s warp and woof.
For example, “Memento Vivere” contains within its layers strains of two melodies Barker composed when still a very young boy (ages seven and four), which were important early markers in his musical development. Additionally, tracks four through nine serve as a type of suite within a suite, culminating with the dancefloor funk of “52”, and a slamming sound meant to mark the transition from life to death, as well as the passage of time. On the other side of that rift, beginning with “Transition”, the album’s remaining tracks emanate from a post-mortem vantage point that has become markedly ethereal and detached, returning to the melodic theme first heard in the second track “Ceastra”. The listener has also moved across this mortal coil, and is invited to reflect for a moment on his/her own positioning upon it.
Though heady, calculated, and perhaps too hands-on for all tastes, there is depth to be had with Barker’s opus if one is inclined towards wanting something deeper from their art. At its best moments, the album is idiosyncratic, unpredictable, well-played, and worth the price of admission.
