While listening to this six-track collection you wouldn’t be shunned for assuming it’s made up of several exceptionally talented musicians. In fact, it’s the work of only one man – multi-instrumentalist and composer James Wallace.
For his third EP release, Melbourne’s ambient orchestral pop producer returns with more signature delicate melodies and spacious arrangements.
Opener Hierloom is one of the standout tracks, with hushed choruses and a deeply layered crescendo of violins making you all soft on the inside, while Halogen Moon begins with a tinkling glockenspiel over a pretty earworm melody.
Burial makes things even more intimate, pulling together a wealth of versatile bowing sounds coupled with his dreamy vocals, but it should have been placed as the album closer, as being mid-album breaks up the intensity and lulls you to sleep.
Fortunately, Everyone Seems To Be In On Something, comes next to wake you up, as Wallace takes his sound to new heights with rhythmic plucked strings on the record’s standout track, bringing the middle of the EP together with twinkling, out-of-thin-air symphonies adding atmosphere.
Wallace has an exceptional talent for creating profound compositions that simply work their way under your skin – he can turn everything from tapping a violin’s strings to samples of his voice into an instrument, constructing sparse, elegant headphone music for your heads and heart.
BY CARLA PAVEZ
Best Track: Everyone Seems To Be In On Something
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In A Word: Hushed
