Released August 4, 2017
Personnel:
- Alex Reed
- Aaron Fuleki
Tracklist:
- Doomsayer
- If I Were You
- Zookeeper
- The Unspeaking
- Stranger (Feat. SAMMUS)
- Knowledge
- Feral
- Phantom Limb
- The Forgetting Room
- I Love You Citizen
- The Wildwood
- At the Road’s End (Feat. Merzbow)
- Talk About Bones
“What sets your soul on fire?”
Sometimes an album comes along that reduces you to awed silence – there is so much to say about it that you actually have no idea what to say about it. This album is one of those.
Seeming consists of a couple of academics: Aaron Fuleki, a software and application technologist and designer, and musician (obviously) from Denison University in Ohio, and Dr. Alex Reed, professor of music at Ithaca College. Reed seems to be the main driving force: composer and author and musician and performer and clearly stuffed with so many ideas that he can hardly keep up with himself. Along with the album Sol are accompanying EPs that provide different mixes of the tracks, and some additional background context for the development of the ideas in Sol. Since all of that is too much to take in for one year, I will stick with the main release.
Sol is a masterpiece of dark post-industrial pop-rock, richly lyrical, sweeping and chunky and ironic, and so incandescently intelligent I’m surprised my speakers have not burst into flames. The main theme of the album seems to be about human transformation — it is time for humanity to move on, to change from the creature we are now into something more transcendent, or at least less harmful to the environment, other species, and ourselves. Those are the broad strokes. Every song presents this existential dilemma in a different manner; I could fill this entire review with nothing but quotes from lyrics of the songs, but best you hear them for yourself. As with most philosophy, everyone will have a somewhat different take on what Reed is trying to say here, and a different favourite song that conveys it.
The album relies profoundly on its lyrical content, so vocals take centre stage: Reed has a very good voice, rich and powerful at times if not particularly distinctive, well-employed and well-articulated – a lyric sheet is almost unnecessary. Around those words swirls music that ranges from dense and relentless post-gothic industrial (“Let’s Talk About Bones”) to delicate electronic pop (the poignantly ironic “Citizen”) to beautiful ballads (“Wildwood”), to broad orchestral sweeps of sound (horns included) in “Doomsayer”, and remarkably each track blends seamlessly into the next, despite their differences.
It is hard to pick out one outstanding track – each one possesses a slightly different identity, a unique shift in style, a surprising twist of construction – somehow apt given the theme of the album. However, I gravitate towards “Doomsayer”, the monster opening track that pummels with breathless declaration of obsession, shifts towards delicacy and then pounds one again with an electronic hammer – I recall the first time hearing it, with my jaw hanging open. Between the words and the music, it was all too much to absorb in one sitting.
In the end, the best I can say is: Sol: A Self-Banishment Ritual really is an astonishing album and this review doesn’t come near to doing it justice. Simultaneously challenging and accessible, it rewards repeat listening—hell, it demands repeat listening– because between the music and the lyric ideas there is so much going on that it is impossible to take it all in at once. It is sing-along thinking-man’s music for the future of us. If we are lucky.
Stream the album below.
