While Carmen Rizzo may be best known as an electronic and world music producer, collaborating with such heavyweights as Seal, Paul Oakenfold and Ryuichi Sakamoto, among many others, as well as an established film composer, sometimes he just needs to be alone. Working through the loss of his parents this year, Rizzo’s latest is a transcendent journey through the heart, with beautiful atmospherics that lend an airy, ethereal quality that seeps throughout the six-track release. A more drum machine–driven “Returning to Silence”—and the only track that has a computerized vocal, albeit for just a few bars at any given time—lends a haunting feeling, as if the music is twisting and turning through time. Listening to “Ascend,” I felt the loss—it is at times sorrowful, yet has an uplifting sonic feel that is quite dramatic. This collection—“conceived and recorded somewhere between Los Angeles, Prague, Sarajevo, Montreal and Tel Aviv,” as his bio says—does bring in some more world instruments effects, as in “Take Me Over,” providing a nice balance against the more electronic-infused tracks. If music truly is the window into one’s soul, then Rizzo has bared all in this enchanting, profoundly moving album. You need to hear this.
