Onager - Hide and Evade

Hear The Track Here

Whenever I am writing reviews I find it's always a good thing to go back through past reviews wherever I can. One, because I don't want to make a complete dick of myself (well, not all the time anyway) and two because I find I can get a better feel for what the artist is up to by taking a longer view of their work. So far, I have reviewed two other Onager tracks (which I must admit surprised me, I could have sworn there were more) and discovered that Dark Glass (July 2005) I liked and recommended and Seeds Of The End (February 2006) which I didn't particularly like but not on account of content, more of style and arrangement.

So, one down, one up so far then...

Like Dark Glass, Hide and Evade is from the darker end of the musical spectrum being a two part track (a 'hide' section and an 'evade' section apparently) and I have to say the dark feel really adds to the sense of atmosphere - at least for the first section. Mind you, that's also one of my prime complaints about this track too. It's not much of a change from one section to another and unless you REALLY listened to it, you'd be hard pressed to say it was two parts. One of the things that has consistently impressed me about this Welsh artists work is his production, and Hide and Evade scores highly on that front with very listenable sounds and a wide open - if slightly bare - arrangement.

On a more negative tip, I felt that there really should have been a lot more distinction between the two sections, especially in the rhythms which pretty much held the same course regardless of what section it happened to be in. One of the main problems with instrumentals is that usually its only us musicians that really like them, and I feel that this track will suffer from that. Although a listener may like what they hear, I don't think there is sufficient drama or structure in this track to grab them by the ears and make them press that all-important download button. Mind you, at a little over three and a half minutes it IS an easy listen but I would have expected a lot more meat on the bones than the thin fayre it holds right now. Onager wrote this as a kinda/sorta game soundtrack and on that level it may well work, but as a stand alone peice of music I wouldn't run out in the street raving about it. Judging by some of the comments posted on this song, it looks again like I am playing odd-man-out but it is a position I am getting well used to. Interesting yes, but not startling and certainly not of sufficent interest to someone who wouldn't normally listen to this kind of material.