Labels: Level Plane
Review by: Alex Deller
Here we have an album that would make a perfect soundtrack for a conversation that runs on early into the morning, preferably accompanied by a steady flow of red wine or black coffee. The kind of talk you don’t even realise has lasted that long until you hear the birds singing outside your window. Distant and melancholic, like a declaration of love placed inside a bottle and set to sea, never finding shore. Much of the album rests on the interplay of subdued guitars and staggered electronic beats, met halfway by Hrishikesh Hirway’s plaintive murmur and an accompaniment of lush instrumentation (trumpet, violin, singing saw”¦) that wraps around the listener like some kind of aural comfort blanket.
Lovely as it can be, I find that if I concentrate too hard I find myself paying less attention. Call me perverse, but I prefer this as a backdrop rather than a centrepiece. The more I focus the less there is to cling to, and the more I physically try to listen the further my mind wanders, leaving the impression that I’m trying to hug something made of smoke. Maybe the languid, soporific nature of the music is a little too much for Mr Hirway’s tiny, humbled voice to contend with, leaving the words he’s penned playing second fiddle to a somnambulistic soundtrack while I phase out and slump towards the keyboard. But I don’t want to criticise too much. Partly because I kind of like it. And partly for fear of breaking the One Am Radio’s poor, fragile heart.