Gary Figueroa
The opening track sucked me right in, and subsequent listens of the album are pleasantly rewarding. I am especially fond of the track Bootlicker Nation. The album is rich in found sound, superb electronic coloring, and rhythmic phrasing. Overall, Sunbane achieved a splendid demonstration of Tully's musical craftsmanship and remarkable evolution. In a word: Brilliant!
Favorite track: Bootlicker Nation.
Steve Hadfield
A real statement album by Sunbane. Huge amounts going on with the production, fantastic guest vocalists, and somehow manages to be cohesive.
Favorite track: The Hydra.
“From the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made…” - Immanuel Kant
I have no idea how to write about this album. At a time marked by both significant personal turbulence and nauseating political degeneration, it was a thing to keep me sane. The place I buried the hurt – in the thousands of tiny details that I obsessed over every free moment I could spare. Meditation in a raging storm.
The personal strife (which I will not name, for it was not mine alone) has thankfully resolved, almost as the album was finished. I can listen back over it and even hear it objectively now.
Listening to the final masters there were so many moments I would highlight – the absolutely stunning performances from the five guest vocalists, the ridiculous number of interlocking layers in Spend the Summer and Yggdrasil, the drop in Halcyon, the howls of rage and despair that make up Ishamael, The Hydra, Bootlicker Nation, Gabriela’s Howl and Towers and the gallows humour snuck in between the lines - hundreds of other things and little moments and tricks and meanings I could happily bore you to tears explaining. I won’t.
In all honesty, I really have to resist the urge to essay a codex for the album, out of desperation to be understood. I will limit the explanation to say that there is a narrative of sorts linking each track together – in parts autobiographical (particularly the first half of the record) and in parts very much not. My fondest hope is that some people who hear it find it engaging enough to pick apart and work out what it means.
Musically it features: dream pop, electronica, trip-hop, rave, post-rock, post-punk, electro, hip-hop, whispercore (shut up it’s a thing now), dub, downtempo, ambient, glitch, a drunken shoegaze singalong, spoken word and more influences that I can possibly describe.
At the moment it is as close as I can get to summing what I feel about life, politics and music into one package. I hope you enjoy it.
- Sunbane, 2020
credits
released September 25, 2020
All music written, performed and recorded by Ian Tully
'Vondel Park' and 'Ishmael' co-written and vocals by Saccharyn
'Spend the Summer' vocals by Colin Mawson
'Carmen (In the Snow)' vocals by MOGAN
'Infinite Origami' co-written and vocals by Agiris
Mastered by Kris Ilic
This is a great concept ! Would love to do something similar in the Sensory Garden Project to raise funds for Papyrus. Great job guys and big up to Rev Phil Dread who guided me here x sensory_garden_project
Perfect soundtrack to a global pandemic. Wonderfully atmospheric, it does indeed sound like a soundtrack to an apocalypse into which we're sleepwalking. Andrew H
Dedicated to the idea of “creating stillness,” the latest from Rohne offers hushed electroacoustic songs that gently sway. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 3, 2021