Locked In is the debut album by Dick van der Heijde. And it’s a remarkable achievement that we have it given the back story.
Not only that – the music is certainly not shabby. It’s an enjoyable, uplifting and quite inspirational listen bringing in a variety of styles though mainly focussed on a modern prog rock feel on a grand concept scale.
It does make me think somewhat of something Dick’s fellow countryman Arjen Lucassen might put together if he was to do a slightly mellow Ayreon album.
Here’s the remarkable bit – Dick suffered a brainstem stroke at the aged just twenty eight years old. This left him completely paralysed and unable to speak – a condition known as Locked-In syndrome.
Since then, he has communicated letter by letter using only his eyes, a remarkable process through which he has gone on to write several books and contribute numerous CD reviews.
Before his stroke, creating and composing music (particularly progressive rock) had been his great passion. For more than three decades since that brainstem stroke, Dick’s connection to music was limited to his work as a reviewer as making music himself was no longer physically possible.
Now with the help of AI, Dick has created a concept album centred around his experience of living with Locked-In syndrome. The lyrics giving his intensely personal and authentic insight into his inner world. He has been able to write the lyrics and music with the instrumentation and vocals credited to Suno – which I believe is some sort of AI music generator?
The album grabs you from the start as Blue Door sets the scene with Dick’s unfortunate brainstem stroke. A nice understated rocker of a song.
Still Here comes next as a lush ballad style song as Dick regains consciousness. Blink Once for Yes is for me one of the album highlights. As you may guess from the title, it explains how Dick was able to do just that if asked a question. One blink for yes or two for no. Here it is:
Dick explains his life and feelings over the whole album with the overall result being an excellent hour or so of lush progressive rock with plenty of clean guitar work, nice, fluid complimentary solos, soaring vocals get across the emotion involved in the lyrics.
And we have so much variety over the running time from progressive rock to metal to melodics and hooks to AOR and even some folk and jazz elements.
Do give this one a chance and take some inspiration from Dick’s determination. It’s a digital only release.
>> LOCKED IN ON AMAZON MUSIC <<
Thanks as always to AC at Bad Dog Promotions for sending this one to me. And if you’re curious to know more about Dick – here’s his web site:
https://dickvanderheijde.nl
It says on there he’s active on Tik Tok. I don’t “do” Tik Tok though if you do, you’ll know to find him I expect.
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