If I said that The Voyager, the second album from The Quality of Mercury, is a concept album, I must quickly add that all notions of 70’s pomp and prog, of keyboard players dressed as wizards and drum solos that go on for half a lifetime, should be quickly dispelled.
The Voyager is only a concept album in that all the tracks here form a story arc, one of a lone voyager drifting deeper into the unknown of space, one set against a backdrop of silent galaxies and infinite star systems, cosmic beauty and isolation. Okay, that does sound like the thing that Yes might have released as a triple album, but that is as far as any comparisons go.
The sonic world that Jeremiah Rouse creates to tell his tale is one of dense textures and cinematic scope, intensity, and intellect, a blend of post-rock weight and melodic accessibility. Across eight tracks, we follow our lone traveller whose quest is both a work of fiction and a metaphor for the far reaches of experience.
“I tried to capture what happens when the hunt for purpose leads you past the edge of the familiar. It’s about the thin line between exploration and unraveling. Inspired by the grand, meditative science-fiction films I’ve always loved, it explores what happens when you travel so far into the stars that reality starts to shimmer,” says Rouse.
“Moonrise” quickly floats out of gentle yet beguiling understaments to explode in a cascade of grand soundscaping, of shoegaze-like walls of guitar, of the abrasive and the angelic, a cocoon of sound that acts as a slow but sure launchpad into the musical exploration.
“Ganymede” is more spacious, more song-oriented; there is groove to the grace, there is easy melody running through the cosmic noise, and “Desperate Measures,” by contrast, is thick and enveloping, music reflecting the vastness of space and the scale of the star clusters, not to mention the danger our astronaut faces.
By the time we arrive at the title track, which plays us out, we have passed through beauty and sonic brutality, artistry and awe-inspiring music, weight and wonder, filmic grandeur and delicate interludes.
This is the soundtrack to a movie yet to be written, one that, for now at least, runs only in Jeremy Rouse’s mind. That may be the way forward. Perhaps this is the start of music makers producing soundtracks for filmmakers to interpret, then turn into visual form, rather than the other way around. Wouldn’t that be something?
Spotify
The Voyager album order
Apple Music
Heaven’s Gate single
Ganymede single
