MARGEN (Spain) 2009

The new album of our friend Ed Macan’s project Hermetic Science presents itself with a cover by Paul Whitehead, the powerful title These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins, and turns out to be an example of what truly progressive instrumental music should always be, showing a perfect equilibrium between orthodox classic [prog] and new paths for those that would traverse this genre.

Like the splendid theorist of progressive music that he is, Ed Macan can’t detach himself from the influences of classic prog such as those that reference ELP in “De Profundis,” but in “Triptych,” for example, we encounter the Macan I prefer, realizing his marimba conceptions with elegance and producing a hybrid that recalls Reich in the formal aspect and offers an ample compendium of the sonorities of atmospheric jazz and progressive rock in its content.  One even perceives some distant echoes of gamelan music.

These are only two examples of the sonorous exuberance that this disc presents.  It is impossible to be more explicit.  The music of Ed Macan/Hermetic Science is much too wide-open and dense to be neatly summarized in twenty lines.  In his musical conception classical technique, the intense serenity of world music, and the risks of progressive rock are all perceptible, with a mighty avoidance of watertight compartments and the projection of a unique personality that has the capacity to convulse the current progressive panorama.  We recommend it effusively.     Emilio Fdez. Argibay