I consider myself
a middle age Elton John fan, because at 44 I am probably in dead center of
the very wide range of Elton fans which go all the way from infants to music
lovers of Elton's age (and beyond). Does that make me part of the target
audience for the new album "Good Morning To The Night"? Yes, for
the simple reason that I am a fan of Elton's musical work. And no, as I am not
into dance music at all - I don't dance!
But that didn't
stop me from downloading the 14 track deluxe version of the album from iTunes -
initiated, however, by a very sceptical click on the "Buy now"
button. To my own surprise, I like most of the album tracks much more
than I had anticipated. Because first of all technically I think it's a
good production and a very interesting synthesis of various - mostly older
- Elton John songs. The slaughter of Elton's original compositions, in my view,
has been kept within acceptable boundaries, so that to me as a listener
who is always open to new versions and covers of songs (not just those of
Elton) this new approach is opening up a new perspective on very familar
tunes.
But it takes more
than just a high level of technical skills, in this case audio mixing, to
deliver a good end result. I think that the album once more proves how
diverse, timeless, and persistent Elton's melodies can be, so that they
maintain their freshness not just through a few decades of time, but also after
being squeezed into a completely new musical genre. As a matter of fact, I
don't think of "Good Morning To The Night" that much as a dance
album, but much more as an easy listening Elton medley collection.
I don't want to
review every mix individually - I don't think it would make much sense. All I
can say after a couple of listenings is that I am almost obsessed with the
track "Karmatron".
What's interesting
is that Elton is heading for his first No 1 album in 20 years in the UK
with the Pnau collaboration. Elton said: “There’s been attempts to remix my
music before but I’ve never been so excited by the result.” He's probably right about that.
A review by Stephan
Heimbecher
www.eltonfan.net
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