Lectio Divina via Radiohead and Rachmaninov

What would we do without Paste Magazine..the "thinking person's Rolling Stone" with Christian undercurrent...learn more about them here.

Most recently I was introduced to Bodies of Water and the Whigs via Paste.

This time, Paste Senior Contributing Editor Andy Whitman, an extremely insightful reviewer, blogged this about a new artist you will want to test-drive:

The year is still young, but it will take some sort of miraculous effort to unseat this one as the best album of 2008. Beneath the icy chill is a warm heart, and it's the damndest collection of sounds (classical piano, hip-hop beats, gurgling synths, clattering trains, operatic divas) that you'll ever hear. It's also Exhibit A on how to make an album as a Christian, which is distinctly different from making a Christian album.

!!

If you're not interested yet, you may accidentally be on the wrong blog.

But read on.
Thank God Christianity Today (some pretty relevant stuff last couple issues) picked up
Whitman's review of the same:

(the) extraordinary merger of classical, electronica and hip hop influences is reason enoigh to care about this album. But I was also immediately struck by his use of Scripture throughout the very non-standard songs..This is the musical equivalent of lectio divina...and it took a classically trained kid to make it work musically via Radiohead and Rachmaninov. The music is quiet, meditative and occasionally, thunderously beautiful...surrender never sounded so multifaceted and so bracing. April 2008, p. 73

If that didn't make you ask "Who is this guy?,"
you'ee still on the wrong blog; click this.

His name is:


Son Lox..

Actually that's his recording name.

He is a young man named Ryan Lott.

The disc?

"At War With Walls and Mazes"

A few more reviews, as if you need them:

• "Not one song on this album is below the highest echelon of trip hop and electronic music. It is nearly flawless." - Nick Greer, sputnikmusic
• "Affecting, resonant, and engaging. There are lights in the darkness and a holy ghost in the Son Lux machine. The lyrical concerns of Sufjan Stevens circa Seven Swans, production techniques from Massive Attack, and the classical habits of Nico Muhly." - Evan McGarvey, pitchfork
• "One of the most eerie and otherworldly albums in recent memory, but it's also one of the most gloriously human." - J Lincoln Hurst
• "At War with Walls and Mazes"defies genre and proves that the mathematics of music can be bent and at times even broken. From minimal elevator sounds to orchestral grandeur, Son Lux is defiant, wondrous, and illuminating." - B.A. Herndon
• "Dynamic atmospheric tunnels of sound that quake and curl in your head." - Faith-Ann Young, RCRDLBL
• "Music that undulates at a half-step ahead of the curve." - Jake Krolick, jambase
• "5/5 stars." - Paul Ford, The Morning News
• "Simultaneously engaging and hypnotic." Amelia Raitt, eMusic
• "Son Lux has allowed the listener to listen to music without listening to songs, like a poet allows the reader to read words without sense, or at least any traditional sense. In this respect, Son Lux also opens the mind's eye." - Paul Bozzo, treblezine
• "Tracks organically mutate from opera-hall-sized compositions with car-speaker-rattling hip-hop beats to bare-all dim-lit bedroom intimateness. A superb and multifaceted album. More amazing is the fact that it is the work of one man." - Matt Whelihan, Free Times

If this doesn't sound even remotely like a prayer you didn't know you had ever prayed..

or at least got you curious, you should probably feel more comfortable with a quick click here.

If you are interested, though, Lux's site is here,
his blog here,
Mypsace here (several songs)
..and his song "Break"is below;
You're welcome.



a concert blip: