Review of Matt Stonehouse's album: 'Rosie's Point of View'
(This review first published in Australian Belly Dance Magazine)
It is summer, and as I sit on my front porch, gazing out over the golden brown hills of my farm, I am listening to Matt's new album. I close my eyes and in the music I can see a landscape that is both familiar and fantastic as I wade through the haze of my imagination. I don't know who Rosie is, but if this is what she see's, then her eyes must be beautiful. But we aren't really talking about Rosie, (whoever she might be...), we're talking about Matt, and this orchestra of magnificent melodies, this soundtrack to an Australian wandering pilgrimage is an expression of both musical mastery and elegant subtlety.
At first listen this music was so smooth, so sublime in its consummate arrangement that it felt over before it had begun. By the tenth listen I began to understand, I began to see through his eyes, to hear through his ears. This music began before I heard it, and played on long after the last note faded into silence. It is said that a sculptor removes the parts of the stone that are unnecessary in order to reveal the shape that has for millennia lain within, a shape put there by the forces that created the universe. This music has lain in wait since the birth of the world, these melodies are built from the wind and the trees themselves. Since this album is really, "Matt's Point of view", it is safe to say that he has looked deep inside himself, has looked out past the horizon of time and culture, and carved from the silence a music that has waited for his hand, waited for his ear, waited for his heart and soul to finally reveal itself to us.
The exultant crescendo, the tidal push and pull of overlapping waves of sound, the ever deepening layers of subtle notes, songs laid upon songs, melodies upon melodies, rhythms unheard upon rhythms made audible, stirring powerful images in the imagination...the rattle of trucks over cattle grids on lonely dirt roads, the chirping of insects at dusk by a creek marked on no map and remembered only in the songlines of the old ones whose country we have inherited. But is is by virtue of this country's diverse history of immigration that this album is made possible, with its blending of cultural influences too diverse to be easily traced. This album is to me, a quintessentially Australian album, made possible at this time in the history of the world through the hands of this utterly irreplaceable musician.
It was only by the time I had listened to this album twenty times that I was able to begin writing this review. How is it possible to put into words the colossal effort that must have gone into the making of this music? It seems a kind of cruel joke that someone could try to condense, to abridge such an opus into a page of writing, no matter how poetic the author of such a review. To convey the beauty of this timeless music into a soundless, brittle text frozen in time seems disrespectful...but what is poetry if not the futile attempt to describe the indescribable?
It is high summer as I sit listening to this album over and over, and it is Matt's point of view that I am being immersed in. I can feel his respect, his devotion, his dedication to making something that will last in our hearts and minds. I can hear his love of this country, and of all countries.
This music, with its inarticulate descriptions of indescribable beauties is a gift to this nation, and to the world, and we who have the opportunity to listen to it, can only now bear silent witness to magic of Matt Stonehouse's soul.
https://mattstonehouse.bandcamp.com/album/rosies-point-of-view
And his drum teaching website is here:
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