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album name

Beautiful Isolation

band name

by Kingbastard

 

  • Digital Album

    Digital Release includes immediate download of Beautiful Isolation + 7 Bonus Tracks (The KingB-Sides) in your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire

    Buy Now  ₤5 GBP

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1.
Losing My Mind Through Bridge Meadow 07:00
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2.
The Slippery Slope to The Lost Art Of Conversation 08:40
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3.
Beautiful Isolation 08:27
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4.
The Deserter 05:09
lyrics
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5.
Open Up Your Mind & The Door 06:43
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6.
Multicolour Octopus Ink Nightmares 07:00
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7.
Seawater Fool - Firewater Fool 04:33
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8.
Prendegast Cherry Grove 05:20
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9.
Sound The Alarm, There's A Dark Sea Rising 08:30
lyrics
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10.
Hapus A Ddaeth I Ben (Croesi Bysedd) 08:38
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11.
Arafu [KingB-Sides] 03:10
12.
Becws Snowdrop [KingB-Sides] 02:00
13.
Diogel Fel Tai [KingB-Sides] 03:00
14.
I Lawr Gan Y Gronfa [KingB-Sides] 02:31
15.
Mae Hi Fel Cofnod Torri [KingB-Sides] 02:20
16.
Ffarwelio Eto [KingB-Sides] 02:30
17.
Materion Llwyd [KingB-Sides] 04:30
about
Album Review:

First up, there’s been a lot of talk about hypnagogic pop recently (in the Wire in particular). My dictionary defines hypnagogic as 1. of or pertaining to drowsiness and 2. inducing drowsiness. Is that really what they mean – pop that makes you sleepy? Or is it just misuse of big words that folk don’t really know the meaning of?

It’s just an aside, although there is a sense that the adjective could be used to describe the new Kingbastard magnum opus Beautiful Isolation. It’s too good to induce drowsiness, but it does inhabit a weird area between dreams and reality.

Anyone familiar with Chris Weeks’ previous works will know him as a playful and eclectic purveyor of electronic music that weaves found sounds and acoustic instrumentation into its melodic fabric. But they won’t be prepared for this at all. Beautiful Isolation plunders its ideas from prog, psych, folk, ambient, new age and soft rock but in unexpected ways. It’s an odyssey of sound and song that is consistently fascinating. Although there are ten tracks, most don’t stick to one theme throughout and often go wandering off in unrelated directions. The whole, though, flows beautifully.

Throughout the album, you catch glimpses of things that remind you of something else, but never in a blatant way. Structurally and thematically its closest cousin would be something like Dark Side of the Moon. It’s partly the way it flows and yet paradoxically leaps about stylistically, partly the way that field recordings – snatches of manic laughter, static, car alarms etc – are integrated, and partly the loose concept that holds the album together: a theme of, well, isolation.

Nearly every song is a conglomeration of different music ideas – some mere snatches, some fully developed into songs that could be plucked from the whole more or less fully formed. Losing My Mind Through Bridge Meadow immediately drags you into the KB soundworld, with multi-tracked vocal harmonies, acoustic guitar, a short snatch of staccato strings and all this before the central song emerges – a brief gem of bucolic, psychedelic pop.

All but three of the tracks are, for the most part, beatless. The title piece is one of the trio that isn’t, and is one of the most melodically straightforward songs on the record, even though the organ driven song is broken up with sections of quasi-ambience, and the coda consists of some fairly grandiose washes of synth. The Deserter is an outstanding folkish, acoustic ballad and one of the album’s key highlights (and why does the little loop at the end remind me of Trumpton?). Others include Sound the Alarm, a distant cousin of the Beach Boys’ Sloop John B played at half the tempo and with twice the melancholy which somehow ends up rattling along like a drum ‘n’ bass tune.

The finale Hapus A Ddaeth I Ben (Croesi Bysedd) brings us back to the Dark Side of the Moon comparisons, as there is some common ground with that record’s closing duo Brain Damage / Eclipse, although the Kingbastard track is much more fractured into different bits, even more than anything preceding it.

Beautiful Isolation is a fantastic achievement, and an unqualified success. It’s a phenomenal patchwork of splintered themes, fully-realised songs and splendid sonic exploration. I’ve hardly scratched the surface in this review, there’s so much going on. I’m no fan of the ‘buy-if-you-like’ tagline since it reduces music to lazy ghettos. But if a record that is part early seventies Floyd, part Future Sound of London, part side two of Eno’s Before and After Science and part Animal Collective sounds at all intriguing to you, I’d say get your wallet or purse out.

Music Musings & Miscellany.

Review: www.textura.org/reviews/kingbastard_beautiful_isolation.htm
credits
released 01 May 2010
Written, performed, recorded & produced by Chris Weeks aka Kingbastard
Artwork by Chris Weeks @ www.myheadisaballoon.com

contact: chris@kingbastardmusic.com
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Track Name: The Deserter
Don't want to go outside
it is cold & wet
You can run for cover
I'll forgive you
but I will not forget

Inside
Outside
Up-Side-Down
all the time

I hear The Deserter
he is here
inside my mind
& he says

I don't want to meet people
No, not today
I don't want to meet people
I've got nothing to say
& if I close my eyes
does it all go away?

Here we are
we're waiting for the buzz
It lies there inside you
making fools out of each of us

Inside
Outside
Up-Side-Down
all the time

I hear The Deserter
he is here
inside my mind
& he says

I don't want to meet people
No, not today
I don't want to meet people
I've got nothing to say
& if I close my eyes
does it all go away?

Go Away....
Track Name: Sound The Alarm, There's A Dark Sea Rising
Sound The Alarm

Ring the bell
Hold the phone
Hear those sirens
Deafening to the core

Don't take it anymore

Ring the bell
Alarm call
Hear those ringtones
Echoing down the hall

It's time to take a fall

so...

Sound The Alarm