duvid - chill

Duvid 

Chill
self-released; 2013

3.4 out of 5

By Matt Jensen

The new album from Duvid entitled Chill sounds exactly as you would expect it to if you looked at the album cover first. The cover shows a picture of two people in the distance looking at a lake and who seem to have no worries whatsoever. It’s an album that sounds like Brian Eno took a stab at contemporary music while listening to elevator music for two weeks straight. Chill  is a very minimal album that utilizes sparse instrumentation and space to create music that feels like it should be playing in the background during a yoga session, or on floating speakers as you take a leisurely stroll through the park. It’s very sparse and non-confrontational. Duvid uses bass, piano, acoustic guitars, and synths, and the occasional drum kit to play songs that are as fleeting as the seasons. 

The album opens with “Hi” which for this album is one of the more percussive heavy songs on the LP. Keys provide the melody as I was drifting to sleep at about the 2:00 minute mark. Now, I’m pretty sure the artist would take this as a compliment as the album is titled Chill and he even categorizes his music as relaxing on his Bandcamp page. The appropriately titled “Elevator Music” condenses a slow bass line, strings, and keys to make a coked-up hipster light a couple of candles, take a bubble bath and slowly submerge himself. The main problem with “Happy Sad Song” is that I felt neither of these emotions when I was listening to the song. Instead I picked up the copy of “Sound and Sound” that was on the table beside me and started reading it. 

The interesting thing about this album is that Duvid is making the exact type of music he set out to make. With that fact in mind I can’t help but be somewhat impressed that Duvid made an album that is the epitome of what relaxing/new age music should be.

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