Review Summary: no apt descriptor // let's dance
In context of The Enid’s vast discography, various fan club-exclusive albums included,
Tripping The Light Fantastic came across as an extension of bandleader Robert John Godfrey’s self-proclaimed “mid-life crisis” that spanned throughout the early nineties up until the band’s return in 1993. An excursion into the very modern world of electronic-based dance music, the revived band’s newest album previewed an entirely new band that was nothing like the Godfrey/Stephen Stewart-helmed lineups of the eighties. While received rather lukewarmly, the band’s return to live performance was highly welcomed and upon the dawn of the subsequent year,
Sundialer, a companion disc to
Tripping came to be. Released by the band’s then-distributor Mantella,
Sundialer further delved into the ideas and concepts behind
Tripping The Light Fantastic using prior songs from albums past as a template.
Containing only five songs, one of which is an original composition made specifically for the album,
Sundialer improved greatly on the band’s newfound sound, which had a rather weak and overly-synthetic sound beforehand. Opening with the title track, which incorporated vague elements of a prior composition (“Truth Drug”, from Godfrey’s post-Enid project, Come September), the song contains slight traces of Godfrey’s trademark sound – highly bombastic, sometimes elegant, yet incredibly fierce, before descending into pulsating dancefloor grooves and flowing harmonization that compliments a rather stellar guitar accompaniment. Whereas the album opened with an original work, the following songs are remixed revisions of earlier works, such as the otherworldly “Dark Hydraulic” that featured a strengthened back-end that the original
Tripping version lacked; a rather obscene remix of “Chaldean Crossing” that updates the song quite a bit for the new decade yet doesn’t abolish the new age-like vibe of the 1988 original, as well as “Ultraviolet Cat”, another
Tripping The Light Fantastic cut that remodeled the Enid sound for a new era (which would be incredibly short-lived). The closing piece, “Salome 95”, is gathered from two other versions of the song: the 1986 original and the 1990 “dance” remake. Featuring vocal effects from both versions as well as the latter’s overall emotive vibe, “Salome 95” turns out to be the sole song to truly benefit from yet another audial facelift, even if it seems quite unnecessary twenty-two years onward.
In retrospect,
Sundialer was something that complimented its preceding album, yet in terms of quality, it was the remix album that proved itself to be superior to its predecessor. While the selection of songs look to be somewhat redundant considering two of the songs were on the previous record, it’s the obvious effort put into the remixes and production that boosts
Sundialer’s staying power far beyond what it should be.
