Genres: Electronic, Ambient, Alt-pop
Former vocalist for the electronic act Underworld, Karl Hyde's first venture into a solo recording starts with an absolute stunner in the song 'The Night Slips Us Smiling Underneath Its Dress' that has the same transcendent post-modern feel that typified his previous act's best work but with a greater focus on his lyrics. This track is filled with drugged excitement, a cold echoed piano eventually turns the corner into a warm guitar solo. The lyrics seeming to detail in a pastiche fashion a night out in Lewisham at 2am involving laughter, African Queens, a car crash, drugs and some lonely time travelling through it as a passenger in a black Mercedes with a very tired driver. It is a great start but nothing else gets to this song's high but some do come close. The following song 'Your Perfume Was the Best Thing' is almost a standard pop song save for a few abstract lyrics and has the pronounced chorus to prove it, it is memorable. 'Shoulda Been A Painter' is a bright sounding song filled with wonder. 'Boy with the Jigsaw Puzzle Fingers' has a kind of unfurling wonderment in the face of the chaos of modern city living.
The feeling of wonderment seems to be the main feeling of all the characters on this album and it seems that these characters are all travelling somewhere in a city somewhere watching life around them. It has the perfect ambient backdrop of keyboards with electronic clicks and beeps to underscore Hyde's lyrics with copious amounts of filters over those. If I had a distinct criticism of this music it is that it drifts a bit like ambient music can, it becomes mood-music that only appeals to people in that mood, the lyrics can occasionally become meanderings. There seems to be only a few tracks that take hold of the listener but overall the album hits its mark without exceeding it.
RATING: 3.5/5
Here's the video for Karl Hyde's single 'The Boy with the Jigsaw Puzzle Fingers'
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