Integral - The Past is My Shadow

Like two halves of the brain, Integral give us a double album of their earliest material which was composed between 2002 and 2006. All throughout it we are taken down winding side paths of sound, through grand colonnades of imperial splendor and then back into the murky depths of a subconscious acid bath. They don't pull any punches and yet these embryonic works for all the erratic character to them wear one down so that by the end of this release you'll be wondering where it all was supposed to go. Perhaps this was the imperative in letting such radically free form songs out of their holding pen, and I do really really enjoy most of what is on 'The Past is My Shadow'. What does it in is that it features too many tracks and there isn't enough direction to what they've composed.

There are a lot of good intentions and there's more than enough creative juice flowing but ultimately, this album is just trying to be all things all at once. I clearly detect the synapses firing at a mad maniacal rate; the setting is for a no holds barred exploratory venture into the dimensional vortex which is the space between one's ears. What I do know for certain is these guys definitely have talent as I've heard their other album 'Rise' and it was much more confident than what I heard here. Let's be clear, I like archival releases. A lot. There is much to be said about what goes unheard outside the bastions of creation insofar as relevancy. Despite this taste I have for the hidden world behind the veil, Integral could have achieved their goal in spades if they'd kept this to a single disc.

It isn't even the way they make the music they do which has me questioning this so much as it is the reasoning behind it. I suppose for a lot of people, this will be a great gift but for me it only demonstrates where they've come from and how great the strides of progress were that they have made. Nov 22 2011