Cleveland-area singer-songwriter Christopher Reynolds has been making music as long as we can remember. He was part of an acoustic folk group called Those Guys, and then put out music on his own under the name Christopher.
In 2014 he retired from his long-time “day job,” teaching French at Berea-Midpark High School, while continuing to explore performance concepts which have in the past focused of creativity, peace, healing and spirituality, which he promotes under the rubric of “urrealism.” As he puts it, “My mission is to sing the dream of Peace on Earth onward by inviting, welcoming and empowering as many as possible to share in a collective, atmospheric clearing now occurring in Western culture and around the planet.”
He’s now released his 20th album, called The Immanent Function, with a music video for the song “The Magnification.” Reynolds co-produced the album with veteran producer Chris Keffer at his Magnetic North Studios, and he drew on the talents of an all-star cast of local players including Rod Reisman, Colin Dussault, Jen Groman, Paul Kraker, Bill Kraker, Chris Cummings, Brian Davison, Bill Wildman, Sukhajit Chauhan, Moss Stanley, Blake Kniola and Chris Hanna.
He calls the album’s 10 tracks, “a soundtrack for the rite of passage we are now living.”
He says, “In the first two tracks, ‘The Magnification’ and ‘Marilyn of the Whirlwind,’ I wanted to use the same instrumentation that Dylan used when he went electric: electric guitar, drums, bass, piano, and Hammond B3. My goal was to paint with his same palette, if you will. I wanted to create a new sound track for our own changing times.”
It’s easy to hear the Dylan inspiration in the sound, as well as visual references in the video. He adds that further inspiration for “The Magnification” came from surrealism and from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
You can find the album and video on Reynolds’s website.