Dale Cornelius is a composer and instrumentalist who doesn’t just create music. He creates atmospheres of feeling. His music is informed and inspired by the frames and sounds of his own life that move him. His latest release is ‘What is Carried, What is Left Behind?’, an album that explores the nature of sound.
The journey that it makes as it makes its way to us. This theme was inspired by a quiet night in a Cathedral in Tuscany. Like a sound bowl, a howling wind swirled into a church and was reflected by a metal door, trapping and cultivating the sound. That resonance, vibration and supernatural feeling. That’s what this collection is meant to bring about for the listener to enjoy.
‘In This Moment, What Matters Most?’ opens the album. A warm and deep cello line invites us in. It has a primal yet enchanting feel, enlarging into quivering violin notes. Layers begin to form, swirling into an expressive, almost cinematic arena. The sound feels very cavernous. It creates space within the composition, keeps it growing. All the layers develop into an orchestral peak. It quivers with tenderness and profound feeling, all trying to lead you to a deeper place of enquiry and thought.
The title track follows. This track significantly reveals how beautiful a language the artist develops with his compositions. His violin flows may start as a foreign feeling. However, by intimately exposing the listener to the expansiveness of the piece, we start to become familiar. Until the track seems to be almost flowing out from us. The violin work in this track form imperfectly and evocatively, like humans in a conversation or a vulnerable exchange. The artist doesn’t strive for the straitjacket frames. He goes for the softer planes, drawing out attention to wayward feelings and characters that are playing out across the soundscape.
‘A Whispered Dawn (Spencer’s Lullaby)’ forms with the dark atmosphere but hopeful significance of the theme. Where you go into the darkness, knowing that always, there is light on the other side of it. It’s such a precious composition because of its significance and what a cozy and comforting space to start your sleep with.
The tracks, ‘Under an Impersonal Sky There Is Hope’ follows closely after, fleshing out the feeling that he incepted in the lullaby’s. The generosity of his art and the expansiveness of the vision is especially felt in these tracks. Like a string of lights on a Christmas tree, the feelings light up, align and you seem to almost glow from the inside.
The album has a way of enclosing the listener into themselves. It makes the solitude space felt. Keeps adding dimension and depth to it. Anyone who loves a good personal time would grow and evolve into these spaces so beautifully. The way he plays with light, mood, feeling and evocative quotients is remarkable.
In ‘Bloom’ you see a burst. An uplift. It is scrumptious, busy colorful and full of that joyful energy you would expect from the title. There are festivities all over the track. The violins form within a flutter of plucked pieces, melodic rhythm. It’s a celebration and it is opening up inside you. He doesn’t give it to you all at once. Like blooming, there’s a lot of intricate craft that he strings one after the other into a delightful continuum that realises the theme. Listen Now!
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The album is available for streaming on popular sites like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music!
You can listen to ‘‘What is Carried, What is Left Behind?’ by Dale Cornelius here -
