This beautiful new work represents a change both from his earlier nocturnal ambience, and his later jazz-tinged and rock-influenced, more structured music, though it is closer to the former. WIDE VIEW, as one might take from the title, is more open and direct without being in any way "light." Call it a more open and musical ambience. Comparisons with Harold Budd might still be made to WIDE VIEW, for its gentleness, restraint and poetic mode of expression, though the instrumentation is wider than just piano.This is a most noteworthy recording, a welcome return to the genre for one of its truly vital artists. It is certain to change what people think Greinke is capable of, and will doubtless give new ambient music fans an introduction to one of the great names who has been inactive for a while.
"Jeff Greinke usually focuses his creative lens on concepts external to the self and the art of capturing a moment in time. Yet, on WIDE VIEW, Greinke turns this spatial element inward to produce nine probing and intimate musical explorations as well as a narrative trajectory that leads the listener through a range of themes in tonality, coloristic range and contrast. The compositions seem basic: slow, open melodies over a shifting foundation of swelling harmonies. But WIDE VIEW is more than system driven modernism, ruled by its compositional system; it is introspective, personal and deliberately widely spaced. Its mood ranges from norish and nocturnal to idyllic and beautiful. The searching, tenderly spare, melodies suggest that Greinke is seeking something more than the conquest of form and articulation. With WIDE VIEW, we see Greinke attempting to unify the artist's identity, the labyrith of the human condition and the deep contents of sound. The definition of each note, the emphasis on peripheral details, the inflectons of his slow melodious strains, proves this to be Greinke's most inviting work."