This album completely blindsided me. I went in not expecting much and was more than pleasantly surprised. You see, I tend to be somewhat ambivalent about solo albums. At best, you gain a clearer understanding of an individual member's contributions to their host band, but at worst, you can get what feels more like a cut down version of the host band's material. To give a good example, as much as I mostly enjoyed 'The Eraser' by Thom Yorke, some of its tracks felt like underdeveloped Radiohead songs to me.
As earlier entries attest, I really, really like Hungry Ghosts, and the fact that we may never see a new album from them saddens me every day. But, this is how I ended up with this album; by this point, I'd already sought out all of Hungry Ghosts' releases, and, somewhat resigned, realised this was the closest I was going to get to brand new material. A "cut down" solo album was better than nothing, I reasoned.
As above, I went in not really expecting much, and even though I knew this wasn't Hungry Ghosts, I hoped it would be similar in some way. Were my hopes met? Well, yes and no. Inevitably, there are some similarites (which is to be expected), but on the whole, 'Sad is Blue' really is a very different beast, sounding more like the soundtrack to an arthouse film. Recorded by Shilo on a 4-track at a Buddhist retreat, the album's eclectic suite features ambient mood pieces, bizarre cabaret, piano dirges, post-rock, noise, dark Lynchian Jazz (hear below) and something that would not sound at all out of place in a silent movie. It is an unapologetically schizophrenic affair that is refreshingly unclassifiable... and I absolutely love it for that. What's more, despite the vast array of styles on display, it still manages to remain consistent. It also goes without saying that my initial cynicism was entirely misplaced.
I have mostly played this during my morning commute, in the evenings when I'm reading or at night when I want to fall asleep. As such, the album has embedded itself into my subconscious and through repeated plays, has become something of an obsession, which is how it has earned a place here amongst other sounds that made me.
And JP Shilo, if by some remote chance you're reading this, please release some new music soon. You're killing me here.
No comments:
Post a Comment