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Spotlight 1
Albums
Aquarelle
Barem
Biosphere
Chubby Wolf
Collard-Neven
Cuni & Durand
FareWell Poetry
Field Rotation
Fonogram
Keith Freund
Freiband
Buckminster Fuzeboard
Harley Gaber
Richard Ginns
Grauraum
Hilton/Phillips
Jenny Hval
Jasper TX
Kenneth Kirschner
The Last Hurrah!!
Letna
The Lickets
Melorman
Penalune
Mat Playford
Radiosonde
Salt Lake Electric Ens.
Will Samson
Janek Schaefer
Phillip Schroeder
Silkie
Sølyst
Swimming
Nicholas Szczepanik
Talvihorros
Kanazu Tomoyuki
Luigi Turra
Watson & Davidson
y0t0
You
Compilations / Mixes
Bleak Wilderness Of Sleep
Lee Curtiss
Deep Medi Volume 3
Goldie
Goldmann & Johannsen
Heidi
Mindfield
Priestley & Smith
SM4 Compilation
EPs
Agoria
Bop Singlayer
Botany
Duprass
Margaret Dygas
Fennesz
Golden Gardens
I Am A Vowel
Mobthrow
Dana Ruh
Will Samson: Hello Friends, Goodbye Friends
Plop
Recorded during the second half of 2010, Hello Friends, Goodbye Friends is the affecting, at times soul-stirring debut album from England-born, Australia-raised, and currently Berlin-based Will Samson. Backed by a mix of delicately pealing electric guitars and mandolin-like acoustic strums, Samson weaves his multi-tracked vocals—a lovely harmonic blend of falsetto and baritone pitches—into eight entrancing song settings.
There's a hushed and intimate, bedroom-styled ambiance about the recording, with tape hiss conspicuously present alongside the guitars, vocals, and basic percussion (maracas, music box tinkles). But aside from the songs themselves, what's most striking about Hello Friends, Goodbye Friends is Samson's vocalizing, which in its upper register exudes a choirboy-like character that nicely complements the serenading character of the songs. With his voice a near-whisper, “Find Me in the Ocean,” for instance, becomes a veritable lullaby about longing and regret, while the faded dimension of the song is reinforced by the presence of a waterlogged piano that sounds in need of tuning; not surprisingly, “Sleeping” is likewise lullaby-like in tone, but also hymnal in character too.
A song such as “Meet Me at Home” conveys a wistfulness and delicacy that calls to mind the soothing style that a band such as L'altra has managed to capture but few others. A few raw e-bow figures surface during “Great Plains” and a simple drum machine beat provides support to the gentle flux of guitar shadings and vocals that courses through “Violins and Polaroids,” but Samson's material otherwise falls more on the side of introspection than extroversion. And though it's modest in length at thirty-nine minutes, Hello Friends, Goodbye Friends nevertheless impresses as a haunting collection of songcraft best heard either in the early morning hours or the depths of night.
September 2011