Good music that sneers as it defies easy categorization. Get it.
author: Michael Sheridan
Like a Train on Fire in Night Sky is only for the brave. I hadn’t realized how narrow my musical boundaries were until this CD stretched them out of recognition. When I first listened to it, I didn’t know what to think. Dazed would not be too strong a word for my condition, rather like the way I felt after first seeing the movie Being John Malkovich. The album contains a truly dizzying mix of musical genres seldom encountered in close association. I had never before heard a playlist that was anything like it – it contains punk, metal, Celtic traditional, Celtic rock, power folk, and ends with a goth rock translation of a traditional Cossack death song. And yet, y’know, it works. I got the album in part because I’d heard good things about Rook, the Celtic rock band that Delirium Fix sprang from. Something very strange has obviously happened to them and I like it.
All the tracks are very good individually, although one of the longest, Sarah’s Set, a Celtic fiddle piece, does start out a tad slow for the first couple of minutes. From that point on Sarah's Set morphs from sweet Celtic traditional to fast-paced Celtic rock. There are three tracks out of the nine on this CD that I'd say are each worth the purchase price by themselves: Beautiful Day, Dirty Digits, and Black Raven (Black Raven is worth TWICE the purchase price), but to get the full effect you have to listen to all nine, though preferably NOT while driving or operating heavy equipment, at least on the first listen-through. The very second this group releases another CD, I’m getting it. I want more Delirium Fix.
[Disclaimer: many years ago I knew one of the band members pretty well. That has nothing to do with my reaction to this CD. I don’t habitually listen to music just because I once knew the musician(s) involved, and this CD is in fact a habit.]
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