Rob McDade
2007 LP Terrafirma
Reviewed by Stu Wright
17 January 2008
Rob McDade is known around Adelaide as an acoustic / ambient music performer, and his third release ‘TERRAFIRMA’ showcases Rob’s ability in this genre. Rob also recently featured at the Adelaide International Guitar Festival, and has performed at the Adelaide Festival Theatre. Drawing from Acoustic, Folk and Progressive Rock influences, this is an interesting, well recorded album, however does take a broad attention span to listen to.
This isn’t a bad thing by any means, (I ADORE instrumental music, from Steve Vai (god) to John Williams (Imperial March, anyone?), but for the mainstream listener giving consideration to an instrumental album containing 15 tracks (12 listed and 3 bonus) with only one track featuring vocals (albeit a cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Pigs on the Wing, Parts 1 & 2’ – Track 5) is a big ask.
Following on from earlier releases ‘EARTHROCK’ (2002) and ‘TOUCHED BY THE SUN’ (2003), Rob showcases his maturing songwriting talents on ‘TERRAFIRMA’, with a good use of effects, loops and samples. Proceedings commence nicely with ‘Water Music 1’, a fine example of layering on several levels, before cutting into ‘Dickhead in a G String’, which fuses Pink Floyd with Joe Satriani (and MANY other influences). A great composition with some nice ideas, but unfortunately at a tad over NINE minutes in length the overall lack of diversity and feeling of repetition let the ambitious opus down. Better arrangement and less repetition could have worked here (shortening and tightening up of this track, or introducing more variance, would have been of definite benefit).
Some highlights are Track 6 ‘Song for Nicky’ (it’s just right), and for excellent chord progressions and some tasty slide work you can’t go past Track 8 ‘Mudflat Blues’, one of the better offerings on this album.
There is an overall repetition and some quite transparent influences which caught my attention on this recording (Track 4 “Something Green” could have been on Led Zeppelin IV (ZOSO), and there’s A LOT of Pink Floyd / Dave Gilmour, and Jimmy Page in here to name a couple...While not intending to be negative (it’s a GOOD CD - acoustic / ambient recording and writing is not easy, especially for a solo writer / performer), indeed the recording overall shows Rob McDade to possess high musical ability, and is quite introspective; however in this genre one needs to produce something quite unique and special to stand out.
Ultimately, ‘TERRAFIRMA’ misses the mark it intends to hit (and it is a very high bar for this segment of the industry), however with some shorter arrangements and more variances in acoustic sounds could have been a winner.
However, given the extremely minimal number of releases in this segment, ‘TERRAFIRMA’ is definitely worth a listen if Ambient / Progressive Rock is your bag. Give it a spin and draw your own conclusions.
