Starting with his pivotal album St. Helena (2012), Tim Kuhl has moved further away from his jazz roots and deeper into a minimalist, electronica hinterland. 2015’s 1982 went further in that direction, and the drummer, composer and member of Sean Lennon’s Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger is now revealing another stop along his mysterious musical journey.
Available November 3, 2017, “The Neon Design” is the first single from Kuhl’s upcoming Sky Valley long player. Broadly speaking, it follows the same formula we described about 1982, “explicitly simple but implicitly a little bit complex,” and once again, Kuhl constructs more of a hypnotic soundscape than a song with the assistance of engineer and producer Joshua Valleau.
The sleek, modern rhythm and riff are as straightforward as they come, perfectly suitable as movie soundtrack music. Instead, the real action happens in the subtle, intensity build-up and the slight decaying of that bright, synth-heavy sound; it begins tamely and ends a little ferociously.
Grab Tim Kuhl’s “The Neon Design” from Bandcamp.
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