Friday, July 8, 2016

Sun Body - Sun Body (2016)

What a beautiful name. Sun Body. Sounds like the band wanted to send a message, perhaps of modest solipsistic essence. I'll take the cover as just that too. 

Saying hi from New Jersey, Sun Body thrive in what is sometimes identified as shoegaze, or maybe ambient post-rock. Again, I'm using hard-to-define genres that are rather there to confuse than clarify. "So how does it sound? Is there any , say, Sigur Rós or Caspian, or Gates, or even Alcest in it? Is there anything for us to find there?".

What is certainly there is quasi-droning textures. Timbral, but not indefinite, with the marvellous bass setting the tone. Hearing the album again and again, I find it to be a collection of doomed, hopeless remarks, a personified desert if you will, aesthetically closer to GYBE! or Aidan Baker than anything else. Throw some Mono for good measure too, just for the attitude. Forget any 'Dream Pop' implications, if anything, this is nightmare pop. It is overall really rewarding and refreshing, for it makes the listener feel, well, alone. Abandoned. As we are. To the end. That's what it did to me anyway. The spacey production contributes to the album's necessary bleakness for in all, what remains is just agony and there's nothing for you to help you elude it.

Humble or pragmatists as they appear, Sun Body would not require of anyone to pay for access to their music. But you can make a gesture, show them not all is forlorn. Not as long as we are still around.

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