(2019) Will Samson - Paralanguage
Review:
British musician Will Samson straddles a blurred line between ambient electronic composition and organic acoustic songwriting, occasionally falling deeper into one territory or another over his various albums, EPs, and collaborations. Not unlike the pastoral chamber pop of American artist S. Carey, Samson’s glacial soundscapes feel deeply connected to the wonders of the natural world. After recording for a variety of European labels, he makes his debut for U.K. indie Wichita Recordings with Paralanguage, his fifth proper solo outing. Moving further away from the guitar-based introspection of his two previous albums, Samson takes a more ethereal approach here, relying heavily on lush, expansive backdrops of strings, piano, synths, and skittering electronic rhythms to frame his vocals, which he delivers almost entirely in an aching falsetto. He attributes the genesis of Paralanguage to his personal experiences with psilocybin, a psychedelic compound found in certain species of mushrooms. Indeed, the album has an unerringly tranquil, dreamlike quality to it, especially on standouts like “Flowerbed” and “Ochre Alps,” as well as its two instrumental tracks, “Lacuna” and “The Human Mosaic,” which appear just past the halfway point like a sort of intermission. Aside from returning collaborator Beatrijs Deklerck (violins) and a few others, the bulk of the music was played and recorded by Samson at his home studio in Brussels. From the very beginning, he establishes a slow-moving mode of crystalline delicacy and essentially sticks with it, almost to a fault, offering little in the way of surprises or major developments. As pretty as it is, Paralanguage suffers somewhat from its own shapelessness, drifting from one misty track to the next without leaving too deep an impression.
Tracklist:
Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk, ambient
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
