Nighttime Calls by Sylver is More Than Mere Electronica

Are you ready for freefall from 5,000ft? The electric tingle as adrenaline zaps your nervous system, the feeling of your heart pounding in your eyes - listen to Sylver's Nighttime Falls and experience it.

I'd never listened to a Sylver CD in my life, but I was given the assignment of writing a review on their album Nighttime Calls. I was a bit skeptical, as one often is when listening to a new band for the first time. Would they be worth my time? Would I be stuck listening to music that, worse than hurting my ears or simply not being my style, left me feeling cold and empty inside?

I slid the CD into my stereo.

Silence. No opening music. Then, from the silence, a voice as clear and strong as resonating crystal shatters my doubt with the first line: Love is An Angel. That's right. Five seconds into Sylver's CD, I was hooked.

Cue the pulse-pounding, pain-numbing electronic base-line, the kind that slips into your mind like 5,000 mega volts, creating that blissful muscle-spasmic desperation to dance. Oh yes, this is techno-magic. Love is An Angel, the first song, has all the nerve-zapping zing of upbeat dance music, but Sylver does something besides that. It gives the song life. It gives the song magic. It builds up emotion within the listener. You can connect to it, and you can sing to it. Many of Sylver's songs deal with romance and love or the pain of losing a sense of who you are-themes that any listener can connect with far more easily than a generic phrase repeated to a beat.

Take Me Back, the next song, opens with the sound stars make when they dance on their reflections, with the sound tears make when they hit your palms-Take Me Back has a very mystical and luminous feel to it, slow and enchanting. You have to hear it to truly understand. Soft lyrics tell a story of a wonderful romance and a girl wanting to return to something she feels she left behind. But just before you start to suspect that this may be a simple ballad, Sylver surprises you, as they do in many other songs on this album, and the tempo jumps up and a chorus of electronic angels start to hum brilliant pulsing melodies. While this song definitely holds true to the electronica feel, it also has a bit of a celtic feel to it.

The mystical feel of Sylver's music continues through Summer Solstice. Summer Solstice, like Take Me Back, is also reminiscent of celtic, new-age music. A soft, female voice whispers her song, and her accompaniment calls to mind, for a bit, the image of a wandering bard in the medieval times, playing his lute as she sings. Her light falsetto voice creates a perfect blend as the baseline starts thumping. Behind that, almost lost amongst the other sounds, the electronica music staccatos like a strobe light so that, even subconsciously, your heart rate can't help but rise. Sylver's music creates a passionate, desperate longing with a slight celtic overtone. Think Enya, but on crack.

Sylver's unique rhythms, unfortunately, do not carry through out their entire CD. Who am I sounds exactly like a pop song in the beginning. The electronica carries through out the song, but it never quite gets to a dancing pace. It's not a slow song by any means, but the lyrics, vocal quality, and style sound a lot like a Jewel or Natalie Imbruglia song with a techno musical background. It is, however, a good song if you enjoy singing along, and while the music, in this case, doesn't exactly reflect the emotional pull of the song, it's still an enjoyable listen; just not quite as unique and dazzling as the rest of the album. Along these same lines is Make It, which could easily be confused with a heavily synthesized pop song with a baseline and rhythm as hard and heavy as a load of iron. Make It is completely non-mystical and details a girl's determination to deal with an untrue boyfriend. Don't Call Me follows a similar theme of angry heartache and carries a similar sound.

However, Sylver's variety of styles keeps their album interesting. Changed, for example, surprises the listener by opening with the sound of fingers flowing across a keyboard, creating a mournful, rippling piano ballad. Sometimes also begins with a sorrowful piano that sounds like water pouring gently over smooth stones, and that same soft, high voice lulls you with an emotional, haunting melody and beautiful lyrics that will leave you breathless and barely able to move: "Sweetest dreams at night reminding her of how it used to be…and her eyes tell a thousand stories…she's like poetry in motion, she brightens up the room…Sometimes she feels homeless in her heart…"

But Sylver's album Nighttime Calls doesn't keep you crying. It is, after all, mostly upbeat fun. Fallin' picks up the pace a bit with more electronica zapping in the background. Then songs like Tomorrow and Where Did I Go Wrong electrify the album back into the jolting dance music status.

Sympathy keeps the energy flowing and spirits up, reminding you that "it's your life and you will be free," a perfect idea to let you really release your inhibitions and move. Behind the lyrics, teasing chords quietly vibrate and slowly and speed up, keeping the rhythm interesting and exciting for dancing. Then, Where Did the Love Go starts with the echo of drums and keeps the baseline pumping in time and that soft, sweet voice strengthens into a powerful instrument with a bold message: "The shit has hit the fan…where did the love go?" and why aren't we making the world a better place now?

Nighttime Calling shows off Sylver's range of musical talent: It heats you up with energetic electricity, then gives you the chills with the intensity of their slower melodies. Rarely does an album work perfectly on the dance floor as well as for singing along in your car; rarely does a single work of art bring you through such a range of emotions. Nighttime Calling will give you an adrenaline high through the energy and the sheer intensity of their music.