Iconophobic is an instrumental album that is far more focused than most releases by self-produced individual artists, yet each of its compositions offer unfocused melodies that appear to be controlled chaos to your ears’ benefit. The album never gives you cheap thrills that you would expect and the short songs often have a feel of jamming to them, despite their construction being that of one person, Iranian musician Salim Ghazi Saeedi.
The first two songs offer the listener a clean and simple way to enter into Saeedi‘s musical world, particularly with the ultra short “Composer’s Laughter”, which features moments that captures the song’s namesake. “The Songful Song of Songbirds” has the jam feel to it, praise for a one-man operation. “Don’t You See the Cheerful Rainbow” has a playful and slightly humorous quality to it.
Iconophoibc could be a solid creative force if a live group of musicians performed the song, live shows could prove to be very powerful given these songs’ missing dynamics that often leave the tracks flat against the speaker. The ambient soundscapes have cinematic melodies that have this psychological thriller ideal to them.
Tracks, so brief, most of the time they run right into each other. Each track changes melodies and focus so often, that without looking at your player’s display, you’d think that one song could go on forever. Each song changes keys, time signatures, and melodies so often, it is as if the composer founds hundreds of small moments of eureka, and could never stick with just one riff at a time—supporting my opinion that Iconophobic is a collection of thoughts and musings of a talent practicing musician.
Has an early Porcupine Tree (On The Sunday Life, Up The Downstair) feel to them, but as if the composer bi-polar tendencies. Iconophobic‘s offerings make so many abrupt changes that often the moments worthy of celebration, pass and leave the musical narrative, more often than not, never to return again, as if they never existed at all. The mix is adequate, cleverly laying tracks down to create a jam-feel as stated before but missing the dynamic space necessary to power the heaviest and most intense moments—the moments that create urgency and a propensity to grab you as the music insinuates.
Iconophobic, beyond a collection of thoughts and musings by a sole composer, is an album with moderate replay value, a great disc to be played to clear and challenge the mind.