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Divine Circles – Oblivion Songs

Divine Circles Oblivion S0ngs 01. Leave 02. Midwest 03. The Prayer 04. Ingenue 05. Hymn [11/29/13] [Paradigms Recordings] Divine Circles is the solo project of Meg Mulhearn, a

10 years ago

divine circles oblivion songs

Divine Circles

Oblivion S0ngs

01. Leave
02. Midwest
03. The Prayer
04. Ingenue
05. Hymn

[11/29/13]
[Paradigms Recordings]

Divine Circles is the solo project of Meg Mulhearn, a fantastic violinist who released this as essentially a solo LP. Yes, you heard correct. You’re about to read a review about a violinist’s solo project. Do not be deterred, however. This album is as much about the rest of the instruments as it is about the violin. The album is a great example of how to take all of your influences over a wide array of styles, combining them efficiently, and releasing an album that, when prompted to listen to, will make your thoughts quickly change from “Why should I?” to “Why didn’t I sooner?”

The album’s opener is chock full of violin, with it sounding almost eerie, and apocalyptic, in a sense. The entire album sounds like a warm apocalypse. Think of it like this: you’re sitting on a cliff above the sea as the sun sets, and you hear a large boom, look up, and see a meteor heading straight for you. But, it’s so beautiful outside, the weather is perfect, it’s a perfect day, and you’re okay with it. As the meteor edges closer, you’re overcome with peace and tranquility, and acceptance of your fate. That is essentially this album in a nutshell. The five songs here provide an excellent soundtrack to the peaceful apocalypse, and you’ll understand once you hear it.

Meg did something on this record that is extremely rare, and that’s mesh a classical instrument, which was in the foreground, with guitars, bass, and drums. It’s almost reminiscent of Godspeed You! Black Emperor in parts, where there’s just a grand climax and everything opens up before the song winds down and comes to a close. It’s almost unfair to compare the two, however, because they are different in a lot of ways. But this album definitely has some post-rock qualities to it, and could easily be put into that genre classification if you wanted to. Yes, the songs are on the shorter side for a post-rock band, but the music itself is very much written like post-rock songs, and even the vocals are kind of slow and droning like some of those bands do.

Overall, there isn’t much to say about the album, because at this point, any other form of praise would be redundant. There really aren’t any faults with this record, save for the fact that it’s only five tracks long. It would have been cool to see where Meg went with a few more songs, maybe even interweaving each separate song into one long piece. Regardless of that, this album is fantastic, and if you don’t check it out, you’re seriously lacking in common sense.

Divine Circles – Oblivion Songs gets…

4/5

-SS

Heavy Blog

Published 10 years ago