Touching the Void, a project of Andy Oppenheimer (a songwriter and singer) and electronic music producer Mark Warner is indeed one touching music experience.
Being familiar with Andy’s previous work, I was curious about his collaboration with another Mark this time. As I expected an excellence in electronic sound and recognizable vocals, I must say this album met my expectations, because this duo won’t settle for less.
There are a lot of emotions here that give that touching feel, even though the electronic sound may produce a bit colder results sometimes, there is nothing cold about this piece of material.
The songs are blessed with flowing melodies and there is a lot of heart in them, a bit melancholic with just a touch of sadness but hope as well. The album offers some acoustic tracks as well that you won’t hear in a disco, but are intended for some good home listening.
“Parallel Lives” is one such track, an opening to the album, that tells you from the start what you can expect, all mentioned above: a melody, a feel, a touch of sublime emotion that hopefully lives in each of us. The acoustic feel is achieved on one more piece of pure excellence, “In This Together” that gives you a feeling of hope while the beauty of the melody is completed by a very emotional vocal performance by Andy.
But there is again a lot of pop in this, that you can hear in “Fragment”, a track with a very poppy chorus, but still a slow track though. It is surely not the kind of pop sound that will make you dance, but instead float in the fields of emotions in your own armchair.
The album is diverse and the sound differs from song to song. The guys seem to experiment a lot with their musical expression, so they dive into synth pop with a less emotional and more minimalistic and icy feel that you can hear on “Inspiration”. This one I would like to hear somewhere other than my home. “Love, Longing and Loss” is not just a title of a song or an album; it is a concept and the core idea of this album. The track that really gets under your skin as well is “Then And Now”. It starts really innocently, led mainly by Andy’s voice and then unexpectedly blossoms into a very colourful landscape of sounds.
The album offers some very interesting remixes and my favourite is Desire remix by Digital ENERGY for their song “Obsession” that made a slow dancer into a dance floor track.
Enjoy the video for Then and Now!
