Colors of a Dying Sun is the debut album from North Sea Empire, which is a new, one-man-band project from Andreas Rasch. Rasch, based in Gothenburg, Sweden, has recorded several Swedish-language albums (as Varjyl); Colors of a Dying Sun is his first English release.
Rasch handled everything on Colors of a Dying Sun: writing, recording, production and all performances. He chooses keyboards, drum loops and guitars to support his vocals. He brings elements of the singer/songwriter tradition and fuses them with ‘80s-era synth styles and modern drum loops. He calls this “a mixture of pop and alternative music,” which is an apt description. I’ll confess: I’ve always been impressed with Swedish artists who can write English-language songs even though English is not their mother tongue. How does ABBA (and Roxette) achieve this, and get English idiom and intonation correct? It’s amazing to me, and Rasch joins this tradition. He offers fine imagery and turns of phrase throughout these nine tracks, including “a boxcar made of matches / and glue to seal our patches” (“When I Awake”), and my favorite, “take a hold of my rocking horse legs, my love” (“A Warrior Dreaming”). There’s some good stuff here. “Autumn Clear” is a sweet ballad, and probably the best realization of North Sea Empire’s strummy-guitar-plus-spacey-synths approach. The instrumental ending was particularly solid. “Snowblind” brings a ‘60s garage-rock feel, and finds Rasch working in some tempo changes. The poppy, drum-loop-driven “A Warrior Dreaming” works well, and contains the aforementioned lyric. That said, it feels that these performances don’t always bring the songs to their full potential. The spacey synth on “When I Awake” is great, but the jangly guitar is limp and distracting. I’d love to hear this song reimagined as a spoken-word, trance-feel dance tune. The organ parts on “Through The Night Into Day” are terrific, but they aren’t enough to push the track over the top. And tempo changes (“Snowblind”) are still best executed with live musicians, not a click track. For the next release, I hope North Sea Empire will bring in some outside players to deliver tracks worthy of these solid songs. Colors of a Dying Sun is a good start, and an interesting entry in the singer/songwriter oeuvre.
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