Winter, Andy: Shades of Light Through Black and White
Posted by Duncan Glenday, SoT Staff Writer on 2006-02-09 01:08:09
My Score:  
The End Records has a huge list of heavy metal acts - but here on the Sea Of Tranquility's hallowed pages they've often been recognized for a new sound they're introducing to the worlds of metal, progressive, and rock music. For example, see our extremely positive reviews of the recent EP by Winds, the latest Age Of Silence CD, and the Subterranean Masquerade's new Suspended Animation Dreams - which one of us (ahem) voted as the best album of 2005. Well The End Records, Age Of Silence, and Winds - and to a lesser extent, Subterranean Masquerade - all have one thing in common, in Norwegian keyboardist Andy Winter. Shades Of Light Through Black and White is Winter's first solo album, and it has precisely nothing in common with the rest of The End's catalog. This is pure classical piano music, composed and played by Winter. That's it. A fifteen-minute one-man piano sonata that will probably not surprise fans of Winter's other bands. As we've said elsewhere, both Age Of Silence and Winds play intelligent, thinking-man's music and the fact that there's a deep classical discipline behind them will have most fans of those bands saying "Yah - that figures!" Don't expect a very technical or virtuoso performance from Winter - this is a subdued piano-only piece, peaceful yet alive, a bit somber and rather simple. In fact those who aren't intimate with piano sonatas may find Shades Of Light Through Black and White to be somewhat monotonous after the first few minutes. But listen again, more carefully, and you'll hear a disciplined performance of a carefully composed piece, worthy of a concert pianist. It's refreshing to see the depth of pure musical talent in the bands we've admired - and it helps vindicate our earlier opinions of the quality of those bands' output. And it isn't uncommon for keyboardists to surprise their fanbase with solo albums that are completely out of character with their home band's sound. Remember Symphony X's Michael Pinella's solo album? Classical - not metal. And Stratovarius's Jens Johanson produces excellent albums of a sort of jazz-funk-boogie-fuze rock. So Andy Winter is in exclusive company here.
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This 16-minute-and-24-second CD from the keyboard player for noteworthy progressive-metal bands Winds and Age of Silence is a soothing one-song piano performance that finds Andy Winter stepping out of his prog and avant-garde musical shadow to perform music in its purest form. Moody, elegant and evocative, "Shades of Light Through Black and White" (the song and the album) flows like a classical work, beginning and ending on mournful notes but invoking several emotions both subtle and obvious during the course of the piece. A far cry from anything else on The End Records label, Shades of Light Through Black and White stands as a bold release that will likely have limited appeal to Winter's core fan base. But that doesn't mean it's not worth hearing.
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