A chilled out affair with an emphasis on ambient evolving textures and ethereal snippets of melody wrapped up in a swathe of rhythmic whirrs, clicks and pops.
The debut full length album from Bristol sound wrangler Jilk is an ambitious and intricate affair. Using a mixture of field recordings and found sound, lush strings, guitar, delicate vocal parts, and other mysterious dark arts, the album achieves a grown up level of sophistication. It’s very much a chilled out affair with an emphasis on ambient evolving textures and ethereal snippets of melody wrapped up in a swathe of rhythmic whirrs, clicks and pops.
Retreat To Sleep has an unassuming nature to it. Many are the productions that try hard to grab your attention among the millions of other productions also battling for your ears and favors. Not that I have a problem with the huge amount of music that constantly vies for our collective sympathy (not to mention cash), anytime anyone makes some music, a little bit of good is done in the world, but since the proliferation of relatively cheap home recording and production equipment, the sheer volume of output is a little overwhelming. This is a whole can of worms that we need open right here, but if I may return to the original point I was blearily trying to get to, this album is a refreshing change to a lot of the attention seeking that goes on. It has a dreamy feel to it that works best during those times when I am alone and consumed by a mundane task like doing the wash, driving somewhere or arranging the crockery in my cupboards into color groups and subdivisions of ascending size. This is music that needs some space to grow into. If you’re hurriedly flicking through tracks and looking for something instant, this may not be the thing that springs to mind, but if you have some definite time and maybe a bit of headspace to ramble into, this is perfect. A bus ride, an appointment on the 58th floor and a broken elevator, whatever, you know what I mean, time to listen and let your thoughts meander.
A subtle and personal album, really worth having in your collection. There will be a time, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sometime, that you will put this on and find that it is the perfect choice.
Retreat To Sleep is available on Bit-Phalanx.
