Human

ANY album with a picture of a naked woman on the cover is bound to attract at least some attention. But avert your eyes for one moment and you will discover no less than five vocalists, each gathered beneath the creative wing of John Michael Zorko. In fact, apart from Erica Mulkey’s cello it is Zorko himself who handles the entire musical side of this oddly-named project and his diverse contributions take the form of piano, synthesiser and guitar, as well as a wide range of atmospheric programming and electronics. This was my first introduction to Falling You and I must admit that I wasn’t too enamoured by the dedication to John Lennon in the sleeve notes. Well, they are from California, after all, and having a penchant for John Lennon is probably compulsory in that part of the world. And I wasn’t familiar with the group’s first two releases, ‘Mercy’ (1998) and ‘Touch’ (2005) respectively, so what of the music? ‘Destiny Trip’ is a slice of Dark Ambient that suddenly assumes a pop beat. Dru Allen’s laid back vocals are a little similar to Enya and refer to a nightly encounter brought about by a form of preordained love chemistry. ‘Tribe’, meanwhile, combines several choral traces and the Eastern-sounding vocals of Aimee Page with a slightly martial beat: ‘The winds of fate are calling from the ends of the earth / Home is where the heart lies / Safe in the hands of my tribe’. The theme is one of ethnic pride and an ancestral homecoming, and similarities with the Icelandic musician, Bjork, are very apparent here. Jennifer McPeak’s vocals on ‘Shadow Child’ – which are more expressive than those of her predecessors - complement the others perfectly and demonstrate that the album’s overall cohesion has been fuelled by a common vision. Light beats and an increasingly active piano flutter away in the background. The synthetic swirls and electronic drones of ‘Bring Down The Stars’ perform a wonderful job when it comes to accentuating the mystical atmosphere created by Dru Allan’s ode to cardiovascular synchronicity. Disaffected bass tones and sweeping feedback bring up the rear. ‘A Bird In A Cage’ sees the return of Aimee Page and a song about freedom and hope: ‘The choke hold has lost its grip / The curse has been lifted / I am freeing myself from lock and key / The caged bird sings like no other’. Page offers a short but effective lilt which rises beautifully at the end of each line and floats through the musical scale like the aerial swoops of a feathered escapee. ‘Varenka’ is based on a character from the famous Tolstoy novel, ‘Anna Karenina’ (1875), and concerns a woman representative of moral stability but who is sorely lacking when it comes to finding a self-assured zest for life and the fulfilment of womenhood. The lyrics seem to be written for Kitty, Varenka’s literary antithesis: ‘With your happiness despite my loss / You showed me mine was nothing’. Erica Mulkey’s cello tugs gently on the heartstrings, as her voice becomes a sorrowful testimony to a process of empirical self-becoming. Jennifer McPeak’s ‘Starshine’ is much more upbeat, perhaps a little too soulful for my tastes, and the lyrics are a litany of desires that yearn for the Muse. ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, which is named after Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book of the same name, echoes his tradition of magic realism with its evocative adjectives about time, sadness and loss. The haunting vocals on the album’s parting shot, ‘An Angel Ameliorate’, have been reserved for Suzanne Perry and, interestingly, are described here as ‘sound poetry’. The theme is not simply about self-improvement, but something far more than that. Something transcendent and Gnostic. It is almost as though all humans are said to be endowed with an innate substance that can be harnessed in the pursuit of total perfection. I’m doubtful whether the vast majority of humans have that ability, but at least the group’s heart is in the right place. Their official website can be found at: http://www.fallingyou.com/