Lubomyr Melnyk — Windmills

Lubomyr Melnyk is a Ukranian pianist that plays a minimalist, ambient style he calls "continuous piano music", which roughly involves playing the same minor chord repeatedly, in different voices and inversions, and letting it ring for roughly one second before playing it again.  It sounds exactly like one might imagine the lonely, endlessly meandering soliloquy of a hermit who has been locked in a tower or dungeon for countless years would sound.  The album has 3 tracks, all of which bleed into each other and are roughly 20 minutes in length.

The album is thoroughly unengaging; it has the feel of an unfocused practice or improvisation session in which the musician believes he is not being heard or listened to.  After the sparse beginning, Melnyk begins playing arpeggiated melodies and iterations on the same chord, never letting his foot off the echo pedal, giving it a murmering, washed out sound.  He attempts to use this echo to cover his sloppy note articulations.  When one idea or phrase ends, Melnyk simply begins another without a care, and never thinks to leave a space, or change the density of his playing, and yet there is little flow or momentum, just an endless stream of mid-paced notes.

This could have made a good ambient recording, perhaps, but it was not well recorded.  The piano has a ringy, detuned, metallic sound, with many a dissonant harmonic, and the microphones were clearly placed too far from the instrument in a heavily reverberant room.  Natural reverbs have resulted in many a beautiful ambient recording, but this one is inadequately captured, and the result is trebley and harsh on the hearing.

The mood is also thoroughly uninviting, and seems to wallow ceaselessly.  I do not need another soundtrack to self-deprecating thoughts, longings or despairing imaginings of the future.  Melnyk seems to be inspired by the spirit of Romantic classical music, but brings none of the variation and depth of that style.  The album is a static melancholic space.

I've always thought that significant restraint was needed to accomplish a good minimalist recording, and this album is proof of that.  By letting musical fragments and ideas sluggishly and carelessly trickle out over the course of an extremely monotonous hour, with no space or distinguishing features between his ideas to create memorable moments, Melnyk has created an unfocused and unlistenable piece of work.  I would recommend anyone sit and improvise on a piano themselves rather than listen to the indistinct, uninspired muddiness on this disk.  As there is no element or moment on this album I enjoy, I am forced to give it the lowest possible rating.