Through the Belly of the Sea

Composers often write with specific stories, events, or objects in mind, and sometimes they claim to have created "program" music that actually evokes their inspirations. Such notions may be useful for the artist, although individual listeners may have entirely different things in mind. Morningbell, a trio from Gainesville, FL, consisting of Travis Atria, his brother, and his sister-in-law, is basically a musical hobby for some white-collar professionals who put out their music on their own record label, which may make them somewhat more susceptible to pretension than full-time musicians forced to work under contract might be. Their third CD, Through the Belly of the Sea, is billed as "A Choose Your Own Adventure Album," by which Atria means a sort of musical story with an interactive aspect like that of a favored children's book series in which the reader (or listener) stands in for the main character and makes decisions leading to different conclusions. This may work better in a book (or a video game) than a record album, although Atria has filled the CD booklet with his descriptions of the "chapter" in his story, an undersea adventure involving a monster, a sunken ship, etc. For the listener, what this boils down to is that he wants you to listen to the tracks on the disc in different sequences depending on how you want his story to proceed. One sequence he doesn't allow for is the lazy one, just putting the CD into a player and letting it run from track one to 12, which is what most people will do. If so (or in any other order, for that matter), they will hear a pleasant series of prog rock songs that could have come from the '70s, with the occasional nautical reference and some watery sounding keyboard effects, but not the story the liner notes explore. And that's fine. If coming up with an interactive adventure is what it took for Morningbell to create music as attractive as this, there's no reason to complain, just as one need not be thinking of the mountain range a composer had in mind to enjoy the symphony he made up in its honor.