"A potent representation of Australian composer Bruce Crossman’s music, Living Colours is inspired by his strong spirituality and eclectic, multicultural interests. Both overtly and subtly, Crossman’s music is designed to embody the expansive geography of Oceania. To this end, the works on the album draw explicitly on the native music of other Asia-Pacific cultures – particularly the Philippines, Korea, and China – and feature vast musical spaces that seem to symbolize the great distances that separate Australia from its neighbours"... Whatever that means...

In his own words, Crossman describes his desire to evoke a “resonance of space” with his music, which arises from a “deep-felt emotion and sensibility linking heaven and earth.” Now, reading that might give you some sort of insight into what sort of self indulgent nonsense you're in for. I'm afraid this is another album where if it weren't for the fact I was reviewing it I wouldn't have listened to it the whole way through once, let alone the half dozen times that I tortured myself with.

Of this album's 4 tracks (1 hr, 03 min, 25 sec), by far and away the most annoying is 'Gentleness-Suddenness' with its random yelling, out of place operatic warbling and sporadic banging and crashing from the percussion section...

In places this is painful to listen to. One for sadists and those that hate the conventions of "proper" classical music.

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Darren Rea