Canadian-based cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne is no stranger to following his passion for classical music while pushing it into heavier, darker, and more experimental territory. He has always stayed true to his vision, sticking to his guns and allowing his arrangements to evolve wherever his creativity takes him.
With his latest release, Empyrean, Weinroth-Browne revisits and reimagines music originally created for BACH, a contemporary dance production by James Wilton Dance. After touring with James and Sarah Wilton and delving deeply into the enormous challenge of bringing this material to life, Browne has now transformed that experience into something that feels entirely his own.
Empyrean is, at its core, a reimagining of the BACH show he previously performed. Drawing from classical music, metal, post-rock, and Middle Eastern atmospheres, Weinroth-Browne doesn’t simply honour Bach, he uses Bach as a foundation from which to build something new, continuing a musical journey that has been with him for more than 22 years.
At times, listening to Empyrean feels like discovering an alternate soundtrack to video games such as Cronos: The New Dawn, Blasphemous, or the 2007 classic BioShock. There is a sense of decay, mystery, danger, and discovery running throughout the record, as though each piece is leading you deeper into another world.
Raphael wants to keep you inside the album’s masterful, gothic-cathedral structure, using his cello to move through landscapes that feel both familiar and completely alien. You can almost imagine yourself wandering through the decaying ruins of Rapture, the post-apocalyptic landscape of 1980s Poland, or the dark-fantasy world of Cvstodia.
At times, he deliberately makes you uncomfortable. This is not an easy album to simply put on from beginning to end without giving it your full attention. Weinroth-Browne wants to push you toward the edge of the cliff, leaving you suspended there before the reality check arrives in a nanosecond.
Sometimes Empyrean embraces a neo-classical approach. At other moments, Weinroth-Browne seems to create his own response to the Berlin School of electronic music, using reverberation and repetition to make sounds move back and forth through the listener’s head.
Elsewhere, it feels like he is composing an imaginary score for Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Then, without warning, he introduces futuristic vibrations that seem to pull imagery straight from the pages of the adult illustrated fantasy magazine Heavy Metal. The music enters an intense loop, spiralling deeper and deeper while Weinroth-Browne pours himself completely into the performance.
With Empyrean, Raphael Weinroth-Browne has created an experience that refuses to sit comfortably inside a single genre. Classical, metal, post-rock, electronic textures, and cinematic atmosphere all collide inside his cello-driven world. It is challenging, haunting, beautiful, and occasionally unsettling, exactly the kind of record that rewards those willing to step inside it and stay there for a while.
