The Glorious Unseen - "Tonight The Stars Speak"
(BEC Recordings - October 23rd, 2007)

 

1. Hear Our Prayers (6:01)
2. Forever Holy (5:11)
3. Meet Us Here (4:55)
4. Tonight The Stars Speak (5:32)
5. Wrapped Up In You (5:25)
6. Oh Praise Him [David Crowder Band cover] (4:09)
7. Where Your Glory Dwells (5:03)
8. Embracing The Call (4:20)
9. Burn In Me (5:18)
10. Close To Your Heart (3:45)

 

 

THE GLORIOUS UNSEEN - Biography 2007

 

In an oversaturated and jaded music industry, Ben Crist’s The Glorious Unseen embodies a refreshing take on the strength of song simplicity and heart felt authenticity. Produced by studio veterans Steve Hindalong and Marc Byrd (Leeland, Jeremy Camp) Tonight the Stars Speak—slated for an October 23rd release— captures a beautifully expansive, room-filling ambience while maintaining the personal intimacy of Crist’s vocal delivery. Rounding-out Crist’s arrangements are studio performances by Cool Hand Luke’s Mark Nicks and Sixpence None the Richer’s Matt Slocum.

Born out of a yearning for spiritual connectedness with other like-minded Christians, Tonight the Stars Speak’s unfolds as a continuous prayer-like confession in response to personally turbulent times. “Many of the songs are inspired from feeling disconnected or burdened with something” Crist recalls after facing the pain of a division within his home church, “Some songs are more intimate and personal. But all of them are written directly to God.”

Before Tooth and Nail approached Crist, many of the songs on Tonight the Stars Speak existed within a church worship setting. Crist leads Anchor Fellowship in song as the music leader and has done so for four years. Consequently, there’s a band-cohesion to the feel of the collection that showcases performance maturity beyond studio cut and paste trickery.

And while Crist shows respect for contemporary worship bands such as David Crowder and the like, “In my mind, the intended audience is kids that listen to Underoath and As Cities Burn and all those bands,” he exclaimed. “I want to see this group of ‘scene’ kids really captured into worship and the presence of God. But also - I think that it has a place in Christian music [in general] today as well”.

Somewhat akin to Whole era Pedro the Lion or The Violet Burning’s ’91 classic, Strength, The Glorious Unseen seamlessly embodies the aural equivalent of deep, worshipful longing. Stylistically, a slight, reverent nod to shoegaze-like white noise—similar to early Starflyer 59 or Slowdive—blankets the arrangements in a warm, droning undercurrent. Each song drifts into the next as a complete experience rather than a traditional song-by song oriented collection. And while tracks “Tonight the Stars Speak” and “Hear Our Prayers” certainly stand out as strong singles in and of themselves, an inherent strength of Tonight the Stars Speak is its cohesive wholeness which will prove to lend itself to attaining a “classic release” status in years to come.

And while Crist is already making waves in the festival circuit and at home, members of the Tooth and Nail / Solid State roster had this to say: The Glorious Unseen is "one of the only worship bands I actually like" claims Tim McTague of Underoath. “This sounds amazing,” says Joshua Scogin of The Chariot “I have always loved what Ben is doing.” Matt MacDonald of The Classic Crime says “I’m putting this on my Ipod.”

In the last two summers The Glorious Unseen played the Cornerstone and Purple Door festivals to enthusiastic concert goers. In December of ’07 they plan to support headliners Underoath for a charity tour titled "Come and Live". “I hope that some other artists will catch the vision for this project and want to put events and tours together” Crist says, “we will play churches and colleges, but really I wanna get out there where the kids that are disillusioned with church are”.

Posted by Ben Christ on October 24th, 2007:

 

Seriously guys it’s amazing to finally have this record out... And thanks for all the overwhelmingly positive response from everyone writing comments and everything on our site... It’s been a long time coming and I know many of you have waited to actually be able to listen to these songs somewhere else other than myspace... My prayer is that these songs will unite us as worshipers... That we would know true intimacy with the Lord through this music... Use this record to search your heart and know the love of the Lord... For only He can make us fulfilled - and when we understand how He feels about us - we won’t need to look to other things for comfort or for love or for things that only he can give...

Be blessed today -

Ben

 

 

 

Posted on September 30th, 2007:

 

The Glorious Unseen is a worship project from Nashville, TN that recently got signed to Tooth & Nail Records / BEC Recordings, with a type of sound one might not necessarily be familiar with when thinking about worship music. In fact, their sound is a more ambient one, music that could become a "new kind of worship" for different people:
"[…] We’re finding that our crowd is more kids that are into Underoath, As Cities Burn, and MewithoutYou rather than the more CCM crowd […]"
"[…] I feel like in general there isn’t anything available that we as a “scene” or whatever you want to call it can identify with in worship music… And it is something that we are desperate for - even though we may not know it all the time - we are created to worship God… it’s part of who we are… that’s why huge hardcore bands such as Underoath can go out in front of thousands of kids and not be ashamed that they are Christian… because God is real and we are created to worship him… and we need songs to worship Him with… we need an outlet to voice our love for him… That is what The Glorious Unseen is about… worship. The sole purpose of this project is to draw this “scene” into communion with God. To give us songs to sing to Him… […]"
To find out more, check out this interview with songwriter Ben Crist and listen then to a phone interview Faith FM Canada did with him back in December.