Sometimes music doesn’t have to do anything. It just has to be there. This record is a good example.
It’s not that nothing happens, but this album is more a collection of still pictures than a film in motion: in this case, a blurred sequence of sepia tones and sunbleached photographs frayed and wrinkled at the edges. Brian Simon utilizes a narrow pallette of saxophone, Rhodes piano, and a Roland 909 (ah, respecting the classics!). Sometimes limitations are the best creative spur, and that’s well apparent here.
Possible points of triangulation might be Helios and the MFA but more than anything, the record feels like the first time I heard My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. It’s gauzy and disorienting, but with a sense of rhythm that keeps things grounded to some extent. Simon’s saxophone is rarely distinguishable, being relegated to providing texture more than melody. Though half the tracks lack percussion, the pulse is always just there under the surface. Continued...