A singer-songwriter from the cold shores of The Netherlands, Martin Lucassen built his musical career with passion and forged it through hardship. Picking up his guitar again in 2014, Lucassen initially struggled with the demands and pitfalls of songwriting. After striving to recreate his creative process and tireless work to improve his musical talents, he decided to seek out the assistance of an American production company, one that he could trust and lend his authentic sounds to.
The company took Lucassen’s first original demo, ‘Come to Me’ and reworked it into a powerful new piece; heightened, fully mastered, and brilliantly vibrant. From this partnership came seventeen songs of true merit, with each one seamlessly combining Lucassen’s old-school vocals with his contemporary rock anthems. After only eight short months, Lucassen released his first full-length album, ‘The Night Turns to Morning Light’, a twelve-track collection that fully expressed the growing artist’s strengths.
Although the album first graced the airwaves back in 2015, Lucassen has now remixed and re-released the original score, bringing a more direct sound to the original compositions and recreating them in his own, unique vision. Picking up where the original release left off, the remixed saga highlights the Brit-pop era quality of Lucassen’s voice, opening onto the mellow, acoustic sounds of ‘Beauty All Around’. It’s an opening that perfectly introduces Lucassen’s voice, contrasting his light, flickering vocals with more ingrained instrumentals.
The track that started it all, ‘Come To Me’ arrives cushioned by the melodies of earlier cuts, and the new production that Lucassen has implemented works brilliantly to capture his original vision. It’s more balanced than the original, with the vocals playing off the instrumentals perfectly, bringing out the real passion and power of the piece.
Elsewhere on the album Lucassen experiments, touching upon Blues flair in ‘How Will It Be’, while closing number ‘Love Me Right Now’ is an unrelenting assault of now-traditional indie sounds infused with crashing percussion and free-wheeling harmonica, bringing the re-worked album to a close in an all new fashion.
It’s a refreshing change in both sound and style from the original, with the personal connection Lucassen has with each track shining through, and the new production he has put in place serving to enhance the emotive quality of the pieces. Admittedly, the album can tend ever so slightly towards the generic, and on rare moments Lucassen lets slip a lyric that clashes with the overall melody of the piece, but this reworked release of ‘The Night Turns To Morning Light’ can be seen as a triumph for Lucassen, with his struggles now gone and his own production skills now more finely tuned.
It’s an album of definite growth and unrelenting adventure, and it will serve as both a good introduction to Lucassen’s sound for new listeners and a stunning prospect for fans of old.
Score: 7/10
