****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
RPWL's first album God Has Failed Again from over a decade ago is still my favorite one. For most of us World Through My Eyes is the one. That album first revealed the camouflaged greatness of RPWL to me as well. Their albums are real reflections of Yogi Lang's inner space at moments in time. World Through My Eyes was, to me, possibly the lightest, most optimistic one of them all (what a shocking statement). Stock and God Has Failed Again fall somewhere in the middle and Trying To Kiss The Sun, Experience and Beyond Man And Time reach us at the depths of our inner selves, if we allow them to.Beyond Man And Time, as preceding it Experience, is again an album many of us will never get to know, unfortunately. Becoming aware of the profound vision behind the songs of this expression of meaning over beauty helps immensely to appreciate this work of art, but it doesn't necessarily change the fact that we crave for musical beauty and harmony in music. When both, deep and powerful meaning able to arouse our intellectual honesty or curiosity and brilliant beautiful musical composition come to full expression, they reach for the center, for our Souls. This album might leave us feeling cold and a bit unfullfilled, searching for the mixture of the above, but... here comes The Fisherman, perhaps the most influential song of RPWL. Let's pray this isn't their swan song. I am not quite sure what Yogi means by 'resting here for a while'.There are other worthwhile songs on this very diffficult album to digest, beginning with We Are What We Are, through Beyond Man And Time, Unchain The Earth all the way to The Wise In The Desert. However, to me, The Fisherman stands on its own. It is a solid 16 minute long composition which doesn't even really start (musically) until its fifth minute. Its structure reminds me of Reach For The Sun, another great creation of the Yogi - Kalle team. That one didn't reveal its greatness for the first three and a half minutes, either. If Reach For The Sun was directed towards God (it might have turned you off by the image of a gracefully aging older gentleman some people's minds associate with words God the Father), The Fisherman is the God within you, your Self, addressing your and other personalities of our human school of busy bees.The build up to this lyrical expression comes to us through the preceding songs of this album. We have come a long way in terms of gaining so called comfort in our physical world but we are no longer able to see the forest, getting lost in between the trees. We can hide in our routines but there is no denying that more and more we keep on escaping from our real inner selves. We used to search deeper and live higher but now we can't believe it and could not care less. 'A life full of science and knowledge but only as far as we can see'; 'Monochrome what was multicolored'; 'A world with no light, a mind with no will, a will without power'; 'This world could have been a better place but my ears learned to see'; 'Marching without direction'; 'I know too much to know of what I'm aware'.Here comes the fisherman, with his enlightenment, his bliss, his oneness hanging on his hook. His 'honey is too high for us to reach'. I hope Yogi's choice of words won't keep you from taking a deep dive into this song (oh maybe my prolonged residing in San Francisco has made me a bit too paranoid). A few alternatives of our possible want and need are being presented to us, and then the journey into the depths of an abyss starts surrounding us with its eternal peace. The darkness has never been filled with more light when you realize that you are on a 'journey to become the self you are'. 'Your will in everything, your life in every scene'. 'All comes through your open heart, the highest to achieve. Only love can be the way to bring you closer to yourself'. A wave of my personal development as a human being come upon me through the deciphering of song lyrics I began at the age of twelve or so, when I could only understand a few English words. I still remember struggling with the concept of a steel breeze from 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' suite (which to this day remains to be for me a monument of a musical composition no other one can trump). The translations of lyrics of songs became my favorite self teaching method. To me Yogi Lang's place within the ranks of our poetic lyricists has been cast in stone by now. He has been gifted with the power of illumination and he has 'never lost his love'. Until now my favorite phrase of Yogi's words was 'if there is an end the end is love'. How much meaning and guidance can be contained within a few words...The Noon ends the album and it brings more questions than answers. What difference does our eternal struggle make, if we are never aware of what we have left behind? Why can't we know for sure where we're heading? If we do create our own destinies why is the big picture of our own making so blurred? Edgar Casey has delivered to us from the depth of our common human consciousness some answers to these everlasting questions (everything any human ever discovered, knew or knows, every one of our deeds and thoughts make up an accessible record). Once we get familiar with them we realize the fact that we are here now is what really matters. We would either never stop judging and forgive ourselves or we might stay put content, basking in our former glory, (rather than fulfilling our present task), had we known our past. Tabula rasa; a clean slate is needed in this life where even God doesn't interfere with the free will of its creation. Obviously, we don't have to spend any time addressing these problems. We could just submerge our thoughts in the lives of our favorite tv shows and movie personalities or our sport or business or other idols. How about spending a few hours with our favorite news analysts? Why live our own lives when we can simply turn away from them? Well, I guess one main thought, Yogi Lang's conviction echoing Beyond Man And Time is that we can run and we can hide but in the end 'the eternal moment of return comes by'.Once the spirit of Beyond Man And Time falls fully upon us the feeling of compassion develops within us. When real artists unswering their calling, talented beyond any doubts, and whose devotion to their work is as fundamental as Yogi Lang's, one of the most exceptional song writers and keyboard players of nowadays (you have to reach beyond this album to understand what i mean), capable of creating atmospherics within songs of the caliber of The Fisherman, Reach For The Sun, Farewell, Wasted Land, Crazy Lane or Masters Of War (my the most favorite cover of all times); or Kalle Wallner, one of the most talented guitar player of his generation and the creator of Black Despair (another phenomenal composition) just can't seem to break through to us anymore (in the making it in the music world sense; as they should be filling our concert halls on all continents) no wonder they start questioning their destinies. Remember, Yogi & Kalle, it is not where we get to but the road we are taking and what we leave behind, what in the end really counts. Your songs will be with us forever. I wanted to thank you for never losing your love...for us.
