“Outer Light, Inner Darkness” (Aaron Clift Production, 2015)
This indie release by The Aaron Clift Experiment is described as progressive rock in the press materials. However, the music you find in this concept album about duality is really a combination of various rock genres.
“ ‘Outer Light, Inner Darkness’ is a concept album about duality: light vs. darkness, individual vs. group, hope vs. despair, etc,” says keyboardist and singer Aaron Clift. “Songs in the first half of the album detail the conflict between these opposing forces, while the songs in second half of the album are a journey toward reconciling the extremes. The album culminates with ‘Bathed in Moonlight,’ a song about how humanity can learn to embrace its outer light and inner darkness and become one with both sides of its nature.”
The album begins with a promising Kansas-style violin piece titled “Kissed by the Sun.” There is too much hard rock for my taste, although it has a great bass solo near the end.
Track 2, “Locked“, is a toe-tapping soft rock piece with some brief progressive leanings and Echolyn influences, with a pretty good guitar solo and final instrumental part.
On “Fragments of Sleep” the band starts doing more interesting things, especially with the vocal interplay and addition of a real string ensemble.
Track 4, “Your Arms Hold Them to the Dark” develops into tired prog metal so that’s one I skipped pretty quickly.
The harder tone continues with a hard rock piece titled “Aoide, Goddess of Song“.
The best piece of the album is track 6, “The Last Oasis“, thanks to its beautifully crafted bass lines and classical strings that morph into prog rock mode.
The mini-suite “Moonscape” is essentially an extended rock ballad.
The last regular album track, “Bathed in Moonlight” has a very fine Anathema-style progressive post rock conclusion.
The album has two bonus tracks. The first one is an acoustic version of “Your Arms Hold Them to the Dark” which sounds way better without the prog metal guitar. This has been my recommendation in recent years. Some prog metal bands could actually make prog versions of their albums by removing the metal riffs.
The second bonus track is a radio single version of the opening track.
The lineup on the album includes band leader Aaron Clift on vocals and keyboards; Eric Gutiérrez on guitar and mandolin; Joe Resnick on drums and percussion; and Devin North on bass. Guests featured: Oscar Dodier on violin; Corina Santos on violin; Behnam Arzaghi on violin; Michael Zahlit on viola, and Diana burgess on cello.
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