Music Review // Erik Lankin "Onward My Son"

Erik Lankin takes us on a neo-classical journey as we dive into space both in a literal sense in the music video and in the space of our minds within the sound.   This one begins slowly with strings which can turn into horns and it just makes this overall sound feeling like a symphony.  I imagine a conductor standing, waving the wand around and watching the instruments play as they should with direction.

Coupled with this sound is a music video which begins with an astronaut in space.  While floating around, the astronaut eventually finds a large amount of butterflies.  This is an interesting aspect of this video because butterflies simply would not be able to survive in space like this.   Eventually the astronaut is back on the ground and walking through the woods, still in full get up even with the helmet on.

As the title suggests, "Onward My Son", the sounds within here eventually get higher and just feel more and more like they are uplifting.  If you were going to try and read into both the sound and the video to go with it, the idea could be that you want your son to travel out of this world, do things never thought possible before, but also still remain grounded the whole time.  It's a nice idea and one that we should all hope for each other.

The best thing about instrumental music is that you can begin to see it.  If you were to play "Onward My Son" without watching the accompanying music video, you could take it into a different story altogether.  But at the end of the day, no matter what you see in your mind when listening to this music, I think it's always going to be about that triumph and going up because that idea definitely shines through in the music itself.