Album Review: TDW – Fountains (Layered Reality Productions)

Spurred on by an all too familiar worldwide pandemic and an urge to keep moving forward after releasing the well-received album The Days the Clock Stopped in December of 2020, main songwriter Tom de Wit took the possibility to quickly write new material that would become this very record. Written, recorded and produced in a record tempo for Tom’s standards, but also fuelled by a very special ingredient… Song input from the fans who pre-ordered the last album and helped to make it all possible!

Multiple songs on this new offering are based on suggestions given by TDW fans in 2020 when they pre-ordered The Days the Clock Stopped. Tom told the fans that if they gave him a subject and basic idea, he would write a song based on those ideas and 6 songs on this album came to be based on these very concepts. Added to this were 4 songs written by Tom that all formed a loose theme tying everything together.

When asked about the theme of the album, Tom described it as follows:

This album has a few themes that form its framework. We have been through the wringer as creators & mankind in general, so I made songs about staying hopeful even when life beats you down, understanding the human value of real art over just blindly staring at sales numbers and marketing and more. My life has been a constant, crusade against hollow art made for profit only. The highest goal for me is to make something that invokes a real response. I think this represents that to the fullest. People often get side-tracked by the business side of things, but at the end of the day it’s our creative fountain that keeps us going. Yes, you have to take your career seriously, yes you have to think of these things, but for me the music and the creative adventure ALWAYS comes first.

Fountains will be released on November 26th, 2021 via Layered Reality Productions.

As unusually unique as ever, TDW’s new release does more than capture the imagination with its blend of angular electronica, melodic tone switches, jazz-metal fusions and more. It transports the imagination into TDW’s weirdo world of music and you’ll never want to leave. That all of this music is tinged with a hopeful and uplifting message, just makes it all the better.

So, how do you describe what TDW does? The better way to explain an album filled with some many rich ideas and detail is to explain the emotions it makes you feel.

There’s a lot. From elation and excitement with the pairing of the title track and following Inner Enemy. The former, TDW scaling things back for a blend of epic heaviness with a brutal touch further in. The latter, wild and wacky but infectious and stimulating.

To the uplifting power that makes you feel stronger than ever with Hope Song I (and much later, Hope Song II). The encouragement that comes from the anthemic heavyweight that is Gratitude’s Song, the edgy and captivating danger that runs through Hunters Eyes and Anthracite’s heartfelt melodic sound. A constant and continuing feeling of support, TDW has your back.

It’s that over-riding positivity that makes the weirdly danceable and wacked out heaviness of Another Choice, Another Universe and the hilariously fun Graveyard Boogie so memorable. No two tracks sound the same and that is confirmed by the speedier Traveller and final epic of the aforementioned Hope Song II.

It’s such a unique album from such a unique artist. An album to make you feel… something. You will, there’s no denying that. Explore it and find out yourself.

TDW – Fountains Full Track Listing:

1. Fountains
2. Inner Enemy
3. Hope Song I
4. Gratitude Song
5. Hunters Eyes
6. Anthracite
7. Another Choice, Another Universe
8. Graveyard Boogie
9. Traveller
10. Hope Song II

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