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Bruce Gall has reviewed Silentaria albums
Mystery and plenty of imagination
by: Bruce Gall
Date: May 21, 2013
Taking on the persona of something between Jason from Friday the 13th films and the phantom of the opera with the white Venetian-style mask, Silentaria (aka Rixa White) has developed a style that carries enough mystery and threat and yet creates a style of 21st century instrumental and synthpop that i have very fond memories of from the 80’s but it would be a mistake to think he is merely resurrecting a past sound. Back then the music was in its infancy and had quite of bit of developing to go through and now “the man in white” has created a very accessible, catchy and rhythmic series of tracks that retain the originals feel but with modern technology and brings us a much smoother sound.
So, with elements of UK 80’s synth mixed with influences of the likes of Vangelis, Jarre and Kitaro, the albums “The Beginning of the End” (2011) and “What’s Real?” (2012) give the listener a clean and crisp new take with excellent synth sounds, drum machines and, above all, great melodies. There’s also a subtle diversity in the tracks so i found i was always intrigued to find out what was coming next possibly due to the composers experiences of different cultures.
I listen to plenty of electronic music and it’s quite refreshing to listen to relatively short pieces that don’t really come into the space, ambient, Berlin-school, therapeutic categories. Some will obviously pigeon-hole certain tracks but for me after hearing both albums there’s a beautiful simplicity to them. Maybe i’m getting the meaning of the wholeness and emptiness philosophy.
The music and the mysterious character have all the makings of a great live act, too.
Two excellent albums worth checking out.
Bruce Gall
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“What’s Real?” and “Eastward” tracks will be featured by Bruce Gall at “Atmospheres” program on One World Radio on May 28, 2013 at 10:00 PM GMT.
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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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The Beginning of the End (poem)
The Beginning of the End
That’s how it ends
So, this is it.
when we lose it all
but
this is not the End
This is only
The Beginning of the End
by Rixa White
“The Beginning of the End” Album Released (Official Press Release)
| Date: October 31, 2011 | ||
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New Album Released:“The Beginning of the End” |
Album Overview
“The Beginning of the End” is a concept album released by Silentaria, the Electronic, New Age musical project, composed and produced by Rixa White; a self-taught pianist, keyboardist, composer and poet known as “Man in White”.
By naming the Album as “The Beginning of the End”, Rixa White refers to his life status and illuminates his vision of present era.
This album is the first sequel of a set of albums focusing on a journey to the inner world. All 11 tracks are conceptually related and named based on their roles in the album story line. However, each track can be listened, felt and enjoyed distinctly.
The album cover image has been designed to emphasize the fact that both the beginning and the end come with enormous blasts in the universe.The light circle in debut album is an iconic sign of Silentaria illustrating a blast of awakening.
Tracks Overview
The mellow theme of “Emerge” , with multi-layered melody and no drum beat, starts to prepare the atmosphere for the second track, “The Beginning of the End” , which is a strong and glorious piece with particularly the same name as album.
It is followed by “Return of the Lost” contains three consecutive movements and ends with an upbeat theme.
“The Ruined Innocence” appears as a chorus music having soft beats, reversed background vocal and expressive melody in an electronic atmosphere combined with influential sound effects.
The next track, “Lament of Being”, is a soft low-beat music which emphasizes sadness.
It leads to “Beyond Destiny”, an upbeat progressive music which is energetic and enhances the listeners’ mood more exclusively.
The most epical piece of the album is “One Last Quest” that reminds us the Enigma’s “Mea Culpa”.
“Hidden Utopia” uses computer-generated vocals to create both breezy and soprano voices for calling Utopia enigmatically. Its identical chord turns into a mid-beat techno in the last part of the track.
Now, “It’s time to go”. In this track the use of computer generated vocals reaches its climax by such a dialogue-like communication between a robot voice and a digital angelic choir. It is mainly about ‘time’ and an invitation to leave the current situation.
“Farewell” is factually indicated a hollow beat by a soothing and consoling theme. It demonstrates a well-built synchronization between electronic and classical themes.
Finally the last episode of the album is “Eastward”. It points to a mystical journey toward spiritual east. It is a mid-beat music containing quad-tone melodies played by middle-eastern instruments and percussions in an electronic space.
About Silentaria
Silentaria is an electronic new age musical project founded in 2010 by Rixa White, a self-taught pianist, keyboardist, composer and poet, known as “Man in White”.
Basically, Silentaria is inspired by the Wholeness and Emptiness philosophy. Its voice is an invitation to the inner world which is silent but the source of every sound. This manifests Silentaria’s slogan: “The Voice of Emptiness”.
Silentaria music layered with progressive parts, effective vocals and proper sound effects creates gentle themes which take the listeners on a journey of self-actualization, inner thought and peaceful insight, while focusing on pure experience of life, beyond conceptual words and beliefs.
Silentaria musical project combines elements of Electronic, New Age, Progressive, Contemporary Instrumental and Ambient music. It is the reminiscence of musical projects like Enigma, Yanni and Jean Michel Jarre, Kitaro and Vangelis.
Silentaria music is mainly instrumental as vocals are occasionally used to highlight its message. The main instruments are Keyboards, Synthesizers, drum machines and digital choirs. Rixa White also uses digital sounds such as Flutes, Strings and computer-generated human voices and writes all the lyrics by himself.
“The Beginning of the End” album is out now! (News)
 |
Album Overview
“The Beginning of the End” is a concept album released by Silentaria, the Electronic, New Age musical project, composed and produced by Rixa White; a self-taught pianist, keyboardist, composer and poet known as “Man in White”.
By naming the Album as “The Beginning of the End”, Rixa White refers to his life status and illuminates his vision of present era.
This album is the first sequel of a set of albums focusing on a journey to the inner world. All 11 tracks are conceptually related and named based on their roles in the album’s story line. However, each track can be listened, felt and enjoyed distinctly.
The album cover image has been designed to emphasize the fact that both the beginning and the end come with enormous blasts in the universe.The light circle in debut album is an iconic sign of Silentaria illustrating a blast of awakening.
Tracks Overview
The mellow theme of “Emerge”, with multi-layered melody and no drum beat, starts to prepare the atmosphere for the second track, “The Beginning of the End”, which is a strong and glorious piece with particularly the same name as album.
It is followed by “Return of the Lost” contains three consecutive movements and ends with an upbeat theme.
“The Ruined Innocence” appears as a chorus music having soft beats, reversed background vocal and expressive melody in an electronic atmosphere combined with influential sound effects.
The next track, “Lament of Being”, is a soft low-beat music which emphasizes sadness.
It leads to “Beyond Destiny”, an upbeat progressive music which is energetic and enhances the listeners’ mood more exclusively.
The most epical piece of the album is “One Last Quest” that reminds us the Enigma’s “Mea Culpa”.
“Hidden Utopia” uses computer-generated vocals to create both breezy and soprano voices for calling Utopia enigmatically. Its identical chord turns into a mid-beat techno in the last part of the track.
Now, “It’s time to go”. In this track the use of computer generated vocals reaches its climax by such a dialogue-like communication between a robot voice and a digital angelic choir. It is mainly about ‘time’ and an invitation to leave the current situation.
“Farewell” is factually indicated a hollow beat by a soothing and consoling theme. It demonstrates a well-built synchronization between electronic and classical themes.
Finally the last episode of the album is “Eastward”. It points to a mystical journey toward spiritual east. It is a mid-beat music containing quad-tone melodies played by middle-eastern instruments and percussions in an electronic space.
Silentaria | An Electronic New Age musical project by Rixa White 