Both in the press release and on his website, Thomas Thielen has a mission statement about this album which is well worth reproducing here. “This is the time when ringtone applicability equals musical quality. This is the place where the greed of being a popstar has replaced the sublime experience of creativity. This is the era in which democracy means mass phenomena, not choices. When we have become too lazy even for subterfuges. And too busy to feel the loss. This is the age when equality means mediocrity, fame defames excellence, education encourages despondency. We excel in conformity, we celebrate our empty hands. We may not burn books, but we skim them. We may not slaughter heretics', but we overshout them. We strive, long, hunger for nothing, thus nobody strive, long, hunger. Fascistic, yet aimless aposiopetic selves. Timetabled freedom. Death in Bologna. Psychoanorexia.”
Yes, this is an album that wants, in fact demands, that we think. Thomas wrote, performed, recorded, engineered and produced the album but it doesn’t come across as a one-man band, as it is so carefully constructed and layered. The piano may well be the bedrock of all that he does, but this is more than just a pianist attempting to bring in some other instrumentation to pad it out, but instead this is all about the right instrument for the right emotional feel and approach. When he brings in electric guitar it fairly blasts out of the speakers, with “Kryptonite Monologues” actually managing to have more than just a hint of Rammstein about it. There are times when this is crunching stadium-filling anthem rock with blistering guitar solos, while at others it is Muse on steroids, Floyd for the masses, Porcupine Tree for the many.
It is not an album that will make its’ full presence felt on just one or two plays, this does need some work but rewards the listener for their patience. Apparently Thomas states that he is a “strictly under-average musician on quite a few instruments, none of which he is capable of playing properly”. Somehow I think he is a master of understatement, as certainly that doesn’t come across on the album. Complex, complicated, majestic and soaring, this is quite a piece of work. There are only four songs, but it is still well over an hour long, and well worth investigating.
