Artist: Dave Kerzner
Album: Breakdown: A Compilation 1995-2019
Label: Cherry Red Records
Release Date: 12.31.19
In exploring the rapidly expanding progressive-rock universe of Dave Kerzner, it’s easy to get lost and give up looking for exits. An immersive and cinematic experience, the 21-track Breakdown A Compilation 1995-2019 acts an introduction to Kerzner’s wondrous musical artistry and imagination, collecting exhilarating live recordings, dreamy selections from his solo work and wide-ranging ephemera from projects such as Sound of Contact, Mantra Vega, In Continuum and Lo-Fi Resistance. While there’s beauty in simplicity, Kerzner finds it in greater abundance winding his way through complex passages of sprawling instrumental lushness.
In concert, luxurious renderings of surging piano ballads “Static” and “New World” morph and grow into widescreen epics, as the slow-building “The Truth Behind” pounds away with dramatic force and “Reckless” feels edgy and hard with scythes of synthesizer gleam cutting through a thicket of sound. More live theatrics radiating from the dark rush of “Omega Point” and the rippling, liquid noir of “Joytown,” a song by the late Kevin Gilbert, of Toy Matinee, who played with Kerzner in the group Thud, are just as dazzling, while a captivating “My Old Friend” travels to the Middle East on rolling tablas and a sea of wailing vocals. Kerzner’s own singing often assumes the impassioned rasp of Peter Gabriel, whose influence on Kerzner is noticeable, as is that of The Beatles and all the branches of Porcupine Tree. From Kerzner’s studio journeys, however, the alternate version of “Into the Sun” here, as well as his 2019 remake of “Paranoia,” drift on gondolas through the same mystic canals navigated by latter-day Pink Floyd.
On “Nothing,” where Fernando Perdomo maps out a fluid and dynamic guitar solo for the ages in a swirling carnival ride of tuneful ELO magic and urgency, Kerzner’s breathtaking compositional ambitions come to the fore. There is undeniable anxiety and exuberance in an infectiously jittery “Scavengers.” The brutish sonic masonry and scratchy, manipulated vocals of the title track climb ever higher, as Kerzner shows throughout how he’s always unfolded elegantly orchestrated and occasionally noisy maelstroms of melancholy and uplift from the elements, weaving guitars, keyboards, bass, strings and thick strands of backing vocals into a transcendent mass with help from guests like former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett, Yes singer Jon Davison and Francis Dunnery of It Bites, just to name a few.
As a lyricist, Kerzner contemplates daredevil risk-taking, questions of faith and fate, what to do with your last breath, the karmic consequences of lies, literary limbo for unfinished characters and communication with friends who’ve crossed over to the great beyond. Those who go looking for adventure, empathy and intrigue will find it by following Kerzner wherever the wind and his own creative whims take him.
—Peter Lindblad
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