Awareness is the key to good music. Awareness means dedication on the side of the musician. It means the attention the composer puts into the feelings and issues he wants to communicate. But the highest accolade music can receive is the undivided attention of the listener, a creation of a situation in which his inner being literally straightens up. David Holmes' excellent album 'Fabric of Life' is capable of reaching this goal with its fine compositions, love for detailed beat programming and awareness (didn't I say awareness is the key?) for ecological and social topics.

Availabe as digital download and a beautifully crafted limited edition cd from the artist's website, 'Fabric of Life' is Holmes' fourth release under the moniker of Auditory Canvas, a name that couldn't fit any better for the work of the US based composer, who fell in love with electronic music when a friend took him to the recording studio of the university where David studied: Holmes really develops sounds and melodies like a large-scale picture, knowing very well which 'colors' and musical landscapes belong to the background and which are addictive enough to get the listener's attentiveness in the foreground. Along the way, harmony affiliates the ten tracks of the album, and Holmes doesn't allow the current trend to distort or even destroy every sound and beat until it is nearly unrecognizable, that is so apparent in the field of Ambient music these days, to influence his well arranged pieces too harsh. He rather puts his attention on detailed string arrangements, thus implementing a warm and almost melancholic sense to his music. Ethnic percussions adds a spice of world music, a frame that fits very well for some exerpts from a speach by Canadian environmental activist Severn Cullis. While her speech becomes more and more haunting, Holmes raises the already high tension of his music - but forgets to stop his wall of sounds and beats when Cullis is underlining her key point of personal revolution.

But this may be the only tiny flaw in an album that offers a tight grid of great melodies and virtuoso beats and sounds.

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