Review Summary: sunshine through a gossamer
As far as I can see, as far as I can tell, as far I can go without zoning out:
Sun People Sleepwalker will never end. The gentle waves of ambience are approximations of some kind of heaven; somewhere for many a far-off radio transmission to go when they die, while the tired sway of the guitar -- when it so chooses to arise -- sounds and (more importantly) feels like it was there the whole time. It hides, just behind that thin screen of static until the space opens up for it to make its entrance. The lights dim, the strumming fades in, the tension resolves.
This is an album where every piece breathes life into the next. There are brief pauses, transitory gaps in between and, in these spaces, the ideas form instantaneously; the first flutter of a baby bird’s wing. I can’t imagine the sharp, pointillistic notes that open
Porcelain Solar Halo ever existing without the careful ministrations that conclude
Frozen Beach Pt.2. And to think they exist in vastly different universes? These songs are cycles, focused on capturing beauty in the quietest moments, before passing down the same set of secrets to the next wave of sounds.
But
Sun People Sleepwalker will never end, and it isn’t from a refusal to do so. I can only ever make conjectures – especially with work so otherworldly, so diaphanous – but I think this record aims to remove the mood from the experience; to take the atmosphere away and lay it bare across a blank canvas. It’s like extricating the understated joy evoked by the first day of spring, then recalibrating it to apply to where you sit, the air you breathe, the decisions you make. It’s ironic, I guess, that one day probably quite soon, I will call these songs inextricable. Then
Sun People Sleepwalker and I will zone out together.
