Yossi Sassi
Melting Clocks

The guy with his names ending the same way happens to come across a glass with a melting clock and a while later it seems like his thoughts are melting as well. It is a story of an ordinary day for maybe you, maybe me, a day of work and all of the routine stuff that plagues most people’s lives and the songs take you through the day back to where it all starts again in a symmetric way making it come full circle and you might realise how pointless your life is if you play the album several times in a row. Or it might inspire you to find a way out of it or to find something else giving it more meaning. Yossi is a known musical quantity known for his work with the band Orphaned Land and he has worked with several musicians during his extensive career and has also shared the stage with many of the big names. There are one or two big names on the guest list for this album as well, an album that is the debut of Yossi as soloist and it features a very cool album cover but the graphics don’t stop there because the story is told photographically in the booklet which actually makes this album a worthy purchase just because of that.

Musically it is a bit paradoxical in it being like an everyday workday but in a good way which can’t be the case of a workday, and also in the fact that it is rather complex and deep with many layers but it is still easily accessible and even a normally gifted metalhead can understand enough of it to enjoy it. There is a lot of clever song building going on in this album and it is not your everyday album in that many of the songs are instrumental, like the first two. The vocals that comes after a while is mainly of Yossi’s tongue but there are some narration and female vocals as well to add some more depth to the storyline. It is a varied album with many different influences from around the world of music even though a big part here is the oriental music that has a prominent role in this story. But you will see lots of variation in the twelve tracks and you will play this album for 55 minutes at least. Did I mention the production? I thought I did, sounds great.

If I was a doctor I would call this brilliant, now I am not so I call it mainly brilliant. For sure this album has more or less anything you could ever desire from an album and tracks like Another Day in the Office and Sunset are fantastic in an almost otherworldly scale. My only little niggle is the track Sahara Afternoon which feels sleepy in comparison to the rest of the album, a bit like a filler that is a good track but not on this album. Many times I find myself mesmerised by this album and I want to give it six points for long periods while listening but when stepping back to see the whole picture I can’t quite stretch that far but nevertheless this will be on the top ten list of 2012 unless something extraordinary happens which I doubt.

So for anyone looking for an inspiration to work out something better with their life, this is an album that might provide just that. I find this album being both inspiring and exciting, it has almost everything going for it and I can recommend it to anyone with the slightest bit of taste. It is so simple yet it has so much depth which makes it both easy to take in and an album lasting for a very long time, and this is something that can be said to showcase a great musician.
A brilliant album, buy it!