daylies music: Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Friday, July 31, 2009

Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Hills West – Escape To The Outside (Map77 Records)

Posted: 31 Jul 2009 03:43 PM PDT

I’m all for DIY, probably even more than most, but to do it well, you need to understand your own limitations. Poor graphic design can be a killer and Escape To The Outside comes wrapped up in very poor graphic design with some generic Photoshop settings applied to some very cliched images. It doesn’t bode well.

Unfortunately, while the music has its moments, it often struggles under the weight of similar problems of cliche and presets. When sticking to more ambient modes such as in album opener ‘Begins Everything Nicely’, ‘Swallow The Sky’ or final track ‘Sky Dreamer’, producer Tom Carey Jr makes his best work, but even in these instances, things like subtle birdsong just reek of hackneyed New Age-ism. And, well, can you see from the track titles just how join-the-dots it’s going to be? When he reaches for rhythms, they are often plodding as in ‘Clear Light’, or rely on painfully generic electronic sounds such as in ‘Watchmen’s Cabin Site’ without any sense of playfulness that might render them ironic or in any way interesting. ‘Jets Over The Ice’ creates a mood well described in its title with some haunting synth washes which are quite successful, almost shifting into Boards Of Canada territory, while ‘When We Are Successful’ reverts back to the early digital sounds and floating nothingness of a thousand New Age CD kiosks.

Escape To The Outside pretty much gives you what the artwork suggests. Carey obviously has a passion for downbeat, floaty electronica but hasn’t yet worked out where his own voice is. In its absence he offers up a string of generic sounds and rhythms which don’t really go anywhere much.

Adrian Elmer