A symphony in miniature as saviour, savour the varnish and what a magisterial sax line to boot from Leland Whitty after the detailed hard digging of the impressionist wash is set up. The drum line (the work of Lowell Whitty, Leland's older brother) is appealingly hyper as it turns out - and there's a grandeur too. So you enter further beyond the virtuosity of the whole production into the storytelling domain which is part of the point of music making surely beyond all abstraction.
The sonic texture is soft and velvety without being too flash in the engineering from the BadBadNotGood ace as he embraces the panorama of composition sounding far jazzier (not a word used lightly) than normal. Drawn from Anyhow out on 9 December of which the dream-like idyll 'Awake' is also streaming and just as convincing. Whitty also dubs in guitar, synthesiser, woodwinds and strings on the album while BadBad muchachos Matthew Tavares, Alex Sowinski and Chester Hansen also figure. Fantasy DJ time for the set(t) down the Badger and Scratcher cueing David Axelrod's 'London' next and probably eventually lots of Deodato and Gil Evans - would that be so very wrong? Answers on a napkin please - ideally not signed in green ink, without any need for a parcel of accompanying emu dung or old signed photos of Mantovani - to the usual address.
Leland Whitty, photo: Raven Shields
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