Onager - Arrival At The Gates

Hear The Track Here

Onager isn't just an MP3 Unsigned artist, he is someone who, unfailingly and unprompted listens to and comments on every track that I release. Now that, in my world, says volumes about a character. Here we are surrounded by gazillions of wannabees who wouldn't cross the road to piss on you if you were on fire, and every once in a while you come across the very, very few people who really do contribute something else besides their music. Of course, such altruistic behaviour means absolutely nothing in the review process, as Onager has also discovered in the past. Score so far? Two lukewarms, one highly recommended and a Must Have for the Essence collab - Embers - Rekindled (October 2007).

Apparently I've heard this before, but I have no recollection of it but that's hardly surprising. Onager is joined on this track by Deborah Ivri who I understand has also done some collaborations with my old mate AndyF, all very incestious I know but hey it IS a small world. Arrival At The Gates is billed as a Soundtrack and I guess that would be a very fair description. The pulse and style denote an action movie of some kind; I was picturing the steppes of Mongolia and thousands of horsemen on the rampage. all a-pillagin' and plunderin'. I have to say that initially the vocal stood out of the track a little too much to be comfortable with and it's such a small tweak....

Stylistically, it is very much of the standard of work I have come to expect from this Welsh artist and given my feelings about the genre, I didn't find listening to this track a few dozen times that arduous a task. There again, it does come in at a sane length of three and a quarter minutes rather than the bloated monstrosities I often get from this genre, so that will help a bit. The instrumentation too has a Celtic feel about it too, now that I've mentioned Onager's roots; mainly coming from some kind of violin sound but it all adds to the overall effect. A soundtrack worth listening to? I should say and if that ain't a reason for the sun to come out, I don't know what is.

Recommended vocal soundtrack.