Category Archives: The Beginning of the End Reviews
James Hunter has reviewed “The Beginning of the End” album
An album from the Enigmatic “Man in White”
by: James Hunter
Date: June 01, 2013
Rixa White and his music project “Silentaria” have been very busy indeed, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have “The Beginning of the End” to review. So before moving on to discuss the music, a few brief thoughts on the first question. Who is Rixa White? My thoughts on that are as follows: I don’t want to know. You see, anyone who goes to such lengths to protect their identity must have some very good reasons in doing so. Bands like Crimson Glory, Kiss, GWAR, Lordi and Slipknot have done similar and I can certainly see the appeal of having a horde of fans at your shows, and then when it’s all done, taking the mask off and walking down to the shops and being left in peace. In essence, the best of both worlds. The focus should be the music.
Now at this point I should admit to being a fan of Vangelis (who ironically first started out in prog rock with Demis Roussos) and I can most definitely blame that on the film Blade Runner. Some comparisons have been made between the two which I think is a little unfair. Vangelis is more “symphonic electronica”, more grandiose, whereas Silentaria has more of the ambient new age electronica feel to it, and has resisted the urge to throw in oddities for the sake of it.
Opening track “Emerge” gives an immediate insight into what to expect, ethereal synthesizers, chilled out ambience, and is a little “Sacred Spirit” but without the Native American chants. “The Beginning of the End” is a confirmation of the direction the album is headed in. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Mark Snow and Sylvester Levay’s work, but here there’s a very solitary feel to the music. In fact, if you cast your mind back to the old days you could easily place this music with the “3DMark” tech demos portraying very surreal scenes such as the statue in the rain (2001).
Electronica, “New Age” ambient chill music is unapologetically what it is. Silentaria / Rixa White has thankfully resisted the urge to draft in elements of dubstep, or whatever else happens to be fashionable at the time, and has remained true to his musical vision. And while I’ve mentioned his musical vision I wonder if perhaps he may pair up his music with his poetry in future works.
You can find out more from his website here: http://silentaria.com
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Grady Harp has reviewed “The Beginning of the End” album
Mind Altering Music
by: Grady Harp
Date: July 16, 2012
Rixa White, also known as the man in white is a talented pianist, electronic keyboardist, and composer who is devoting his talent to creating albums of music under the aegis of Silentaria. This is New Age Music and in a marketplace where so many albums claim to be in this field, Rixa White is clearly the most sophisticated. His compositions are rich in variations of color and rhythms and harmonics, so much so that at times the listener is transported to an arena where there seems to be a full symphony orchestra and chorus.
Rixa White’s eleven tracks create gentle themes transporting the listener on a journey of self-actualization, inner thought and peaceful insight, while focusing on pure experience of life, beyond conceptual words and beliefs. The tracks included on this album have signifiers for identification, and areas follows: Emerge, The Beginning of the End, Return of the Lost, The Ruined Innocence, Lament of Being, Beyond Destiny, One Last Quest, Hidden Utopia, It’s time to go, Farewell, and Eastward. The music require the listener to set aside time alone, time when the mind can be cleared of all extraneous information, and simply release to the experience that pours out of the speakers. This is a purging time and an enriching one. And we all need what Rixa White and Silentaria offer.
Grady Harp, July 12
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Jim Chambers has reviewed “The Beginning of the End” album
“A groundbreaking tour de force album by Rixa White”
by: Jim Chambers
Date: July 15, 2012
Having previously reviewed Rixa White’s album “What’s Real?”, when I was offered the opportunity to review “The Beginning of the End,” I was happy to do so. My personal music library is a bit heavy with music from the 1940s through the 1970s, but I do listen to a lot of contemporary music, including New Age electronic music. To me, New Age has been a mixed bag, with some I really enjoyed and play often, and some I didn’t care for at all.
“The Beginning of the End” is one of the former. I enjoyed the album very much. The eleven tracks ranged from gentle, easy listening to relentless, driving beats. “Beyond Destiny” was one of my favorites, with a spirited boldness. “One Last Quest” was another very upbeat sound. Balancing these were softer tracks like “Return of the Lost.” The sounds were mostly instrumental only, although “It’s Time to Go” had some quirky synthesized voices that were audible.
In some of the New Age synthesized instrumental albums that I’ve sampled, after listening to a few tracks, the music begins to take on a sameness, where the different tracks sound like minor variations of the others. Not so with “The Beginning of the End.” Each piece had its own identifying uniqueness that made it recognizable from the others. The album includes some of the most complex and rich electronic music that I’ve heard. For a single artist to have produced such sounds must have been an enormously challenging undertaking, but in the end, it works.
Highly recommended for all music lovers, with kudos to Rixa White for a tour de force performance.
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Mike DeGagne has reviewed “The Beginning of the End” album
Cosmic, Trance-like, Hypnotic, Celestial, Mesmerizing
by: Mike DeGagne
Date: January 20, 2012
These are just a few of the sure-fire adjectives that will most likely be employed when describing Silentaria’s album “The Beginning of the End”. The music is synthesizer based, with layer upon layer of spacey progressive waves, apropos vocal injections, and multi-colored flashes of assorted beats, rhythms, and pulses. Like a trip through outer space and then suddenly experiencing a supernova, Silentaria take you on a voyage with plenty of surprises. Yes, it’s been done before, but that doesn’t mean that one can’t indulge once again in this trippy, new-age style of delicious sonic syrup.The comparisons are plenty…Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, just to name a few. These resemblances hit home right away on “Emerge”, the opening track. A dancing rhythm and pulses of synthesizer beams painting colors in your mind, both combining and leaving you with a peaceful ease that is aided by the faint choral of “aaahhhs” that float by in the background. There’s a wonderful detached feel that arises from Silentaria’s style of music…a type of “comfortably numb“-ness that the band was aiming for and succeeded in accomplishing. The same can be said for the album’s title track, the next song in sequence, which adds a faint backbeat but still incorporates a lush, celestial-like bunch of keyboard swatches up front to keep with the mood.
“Return of the Lost” incorporates more of a mysterious feel to its body, sounding like the music being played in a suspense movie, chock full of short, sporadic bits of synth. “The Ruined Innocence” is haunting, almost Omen-like in its mood and soft yet sinister air. This pair of songs exhibit yet another color in the spectrum of Silentaria’s electronic music…a welcoming change to what could’ve been (but is far from) a set of tracks weighed down by similar rhythms, themes, and time signatures. They change gears once again in “Lament of Being”, a science fiction-like set of mechanical keyboard lines that sound purposely cold, lonely, and distant. The pace is picked up on “Beyond Destiny”, which sounds like it could have been used in the movie Blade Runner. Melodic and musically vibrant, the synthesizer is put to good use once again with its up-tempo pace and ethereal pastiches swimming about in mid-air.
“One Last Quest” has the listener visioning a barren landscape with a solitary voyageur trekking across its stark terrain…quite effective. “Hidden Utopia” is a shimmering barrage of pulsating rhythms, short and sweet, but merging together to create a kaleidoscope of electronic hues. In “It’s Time To Go”, the robotic voice that repeats the title of the track is nestled in amongst more mood-infused patches of chilly tones and tinges, while “Farewell” bubbles with frothy keyboard fragments and dazzling bursts of electronic sketches. The album ends with “Eastward”, a sort of clunky, Alan Parsons Project-ish track that doesn’t feel out of place from rest of the album’s topography.
To sum it up, Silentaria doesn’t really do anything new here. They don’t break new electronic ground or add any special effects for shock value. What they do, plain and simple, is create an appealing collection of electronic pieces that breed their own definite personality. Who cares about the comparisons, or what other artists their music reminds you of, Silentaria’s “The Beginning of the End” makes for a great escape into the wonders of electronic music, and they get full marks for making each track distinctive, individualistic, and eccentric.
Mike DeGagne
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Silentaria | An Electronic New Age musical project by Rixa White 