UMP 2025
Echoes Of Tomorrow
New Hampshire harvester of harmonies harnesses the future with understated guitar grandeur.
Approaching his sixtieth year as a recording artist, this American master of six strings may have accrued quite a few accolades, and his exploration of new age sonic panoramas resulted in denting into Billboard’s Top 10 in this category and becoming KitarÅ’s labelmate. None of it made Randy Armstrong a star, though, but then, turning into one never loomed large on his agenda, spiritual art taking priority on the veteran’s releases, both with various collectives he’s led over the years and as a solo performer. So while “Echoes Of Tomorrow” will find Armstrong in the company of fellow trippers, the ten pieces on offer here form Randy’s most personal statement – if “statement” is a correct word for such an exquisite album.
Still, the perspective unfolding on this platter is not ethereal, what with the player’s rather muscular delivery rendering the five-part “Choose Love” suite, penned for a musical which was staged on his hometurf, earthbound yet transcendental – and adventurous, too. Jazz-tinged throughout – the aspect the acoustic cover of Keith Jarrett’s “Memories Of Tomorrow” focuses on – and given an appropriate intricacy, the record’s many facets aren’t limited to a single genre, however. Whereas djembe and tabla spice up the gossamer passages of “Courage” without making it sound exotic, because there are traditional folk motifs at the fore, something the multilayered “Born In Appalachia” emphasizes in the album’s highly dynamic finale, “Gratitude” sees Armstrong handling all the instruments to project a blissful light.
Applied to his radiant reading of Jean Sibelius’s “Finlandia” which shows Randy’s gentle grasp of romanticism, the same approach must demonstrate his integrity when set against the groovy “Together” and the urgency-filled “Ode To Sibelius” that, respectively, precede and follow the classical tone poem. But the flute-flaunting “Forgiveness” should also come across as passionately celestial, despite the birds’ tweets embedded in the number’s delicate flow, and “Light Of Unity” only stresses the fragile balance between the intangible and the physical worlds. Fascinating.
****1/3
