Album $10
Song Info
Genre
Charts
Peak #79
Peak in subgenre #17
Author
Adam Levin & Joe Lobell
Rights
Adam Levin & Joe Lobell (All rights reserved)
Uploaded
July 29, 2017
Track Files
MP3
MP3 9.0 MB • 128 kbps • 9:48
Story behind the song
Amidst our national climate of division -- and creating and sustaining solidarity -- 'Islands' is a metaphor and musical reflection of those challenges.
Its Movement One ('Pandora's Box') resembles a slightly twisted piano concerto, Two ('Needle's Eye') a piano in solitary confinement, and Three ('Testament') an electric guitar sneak attack....with jazz, classical and rock elements forming the erratic atmosphere. Or a lengthy Rorschach test with no correct answer. Using a roadmap and compass, the first movement is marked by themes and variations, the second hosts a development with thematic signposts at the entrance and exit gates, and the third reflects them all back at you in a funhouse mirror.
"Portraying issues of human isolation and connection is 'Islands', one of Adams most challenging and invigorating works to date. If Joe Lobell's poetry in 'Modern Mind' exhorts the contemporary artist to dig a well of inspiration in the morass of modern culture, Adam's magnum opus engages in a bit of seriously playful one-upmanship, daring the listener to keep up with him as he takes us on a rollercoaster ride through an apparently haphazard collection of themes that is ultimately revealed to be an intricately balanced construct, bringing order out of chaos just as a kaleidoscope wrings symmetrical beauty from broken glass. Joe tells us each individual is 'an island in a universe of islands'; Adam shows us how all those islands are connected."
- Peter Stoller
"Lovely! I'm enjoying listening to this immensely. Who can resist such subtlety of emotion and such powerful imagination? The music has a Personality and it's a very attractive one....really great writing and playing...the sound quality is stunning, crisp clean and wonderfully dynamic...loads of influences that blend to make something new. Yeah!"
- On-Reflection
"Really cool. Jazzy and advanced. The poem framed by the music. Very hip rendition. Exhilarating. I forgot how good the poem is. Your feeling musical exposition (not backdrop but surrounding) multiplies the poem. Your reading is, in a nutshell, cool. Makes me want to do a full album with you (a big project I know) of my poems and your musical expositions and turning the album into a show."
- Joe Lobell
"That bass line at the beginning of 'Islands' still freaks me out, as it is so perfectly melodic."
- Ian Smit, Monkeyworks
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