Posted on: February 24, 2012 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Frank Steiner, Jr is a brave performer. On Into Forever, Steiner’s new title, things get started with a ten-minute opening track (Love’s Whisper). It is due to Steiner’s ability as a musician and as a composer that this gambit pays off. Love’s Whisper has a panoply of different elements, establishing the track as something scintillating. Different movements provide listeners with a constantly-changing experience; the one constant that Into Forever possesses is that this experience is positive.

During Love’s Whisper’s follow-up (Floating Pedals), Steiner lets everything drop away. Listeners are provided with one voice – a piano line – that blends dark and light, music and silence, into a stellar track. The authority of the piano gradually swells until listeners are greeted with an overall warmth. There is a more terse and autumn Steiner to be heard in Radiant Spiral, a track that uses repetition and more soothing tones to involve listeners. The middle point of the album is marked with Divine Fragrance, a fifteen-minute travail through orchestra and ambient lands.

There is something epic to this track that will stick with listeners long after the CD stops spinning. Lead Me To You is the first track of the second half of Into Forever, and listeners are eased back into a serene bliss – hints of the outdoors can be found at all points during this seven-minute slice of heaven. Into Forever ends with Mystery’s Invitation, a conclusion that places an exclamation point onto the album. This is a darker track, reminiscent of a forest or nighttime outdoors scene, and Steiner’s compositions do well to add to the overall ambience of this closing effort. Pick Into Forever up today.

Top Tracks: Love’s Whisper, Lead Me To You

Rating: 8.8/10

Frank Steiner, Jr. – Into Forever (CD) / 2012 Real Music / 7 Tracks / http://www.realmusic.com

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