| Artist: Tim Story Album: Caravan Released: 15 February 2005 |  
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The music of Tim Story comes off sounding perfect and effortless. Throughout his career, Story's compositions have remained open and elegant, aspiring to touch the higher themes of American life. His work has evolved from formative years realizing electronic poems on Threads (1981) and In Another Country (1982), to Beguiled (1991), an inspired album of textural piano and synthesizer, to the dignified and dulcet "Ambient Chamber Music" found on Abridged (1996) and Shadowplay (2001). On Caravan (48'56"), the soundtrack to the film set in Nepal and Niger, the music must venture beyond the borders of America and - for Story - into new sonic territory. Scoring this film would mean adding sonic geographic cues. Here, for the first time in Story's music, are the exotic and ethnic flutes, drums, vocals and percussion more associated with World Music. An interesting balance is struck as these new sounds are presented against Western musical elements: strings, woodwinds, piano and electronics, all arranged into Story's signature spare yet refined motifs. How has this homebody from Ohio managed to create a successful soundtrack to a film dealing with two lives on the other side of the world? Story is a composer dealing with universal themes. His "music searches for the nuances and truths of human nature". Caravan "is strikingly haunting and surprisingly cohesive - even when removed from the context of the film itself".
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 13 April 2005 | |
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