Artist: Yanni
Album: Truth of Touch
Label: Yanni Wake Entertainment
Release Date: Feb. 8
Grade: C-
For those of you that were waiting, wait no longer. The biggest name in new-age adult contemporary music is set to release Truth of Touch, his first album of wholly new material since 2003's Ethnicity.
Those that have been waiting might be a tad bit disappointed, however. Yanni's 16th studio album, while certainly not a departure from the Greek musician's long-established style, does sound uncomfortably different from previous releases.
For one, Truth of Touch is much more heavily predicated on synthesizers and electronic instruments than previous Yanni albums. Though this isn't entirely a bad thing – the ambient and abstract beginning of "Echo of a Dream" is rather interesting – on the whole, it's not something that works well.
Yanni's sensibilities of how to effectively employ synth and electronic parts seem to be stuck in the 1980s, and it really shows on tracks like "I'm So," "Secret," and the embarrassingly titled "Mist of a Kiss."
While cheesy synthesizer backing parts are dangerously overused, the wide range of world music influence Yanni has become all but synonymous with is lacking. "Voyage" contains both an Arabesque string part and a classical guitar segment, and "Flash of Color" is mostly composed of a decidedly Latin groove, but most of the album is made up of generic, straightforward pieces often dominated by '80s synth parts. Occasional tracks, like "Can't Wait," feature laughably sappy female vocals that don't help matters, either.
On top of all this, many of the album's tracks are simply boring. "Guilty Pleasure" is a repetitious piece made up of variations on a single piano melody, while "Seasons" is surprisingly undynamic for a song with such a title.
Truth of Touch does hold a couple of bright spots, however. The title track is a good representative Yanni piece, and features an upbeat keyboard melody joined at various points by a plethora of other instruments. "Yanni & Arturo" has fantastic interplay between the prominent piano and trumpet parts, while "O Luce Che Brilla Nell 'Oscurita" boasts powerful vocals sung in Italian.
For every good track on Yanni's new release, though, there are at least a couple that are boring, generic, caught-in-the '80s, or outright bad. Unless you're the world's biggest Yanni fan, this is an album you never want to touch.
E-mail: arts@ubspectrum.com
