Score: 4/10
Soulwire’s last.fm opens with a quote from the artist in question, Mr. Ken Hill. Hill submits that his “one-man project” aims to “to artistically interpret the life we live into shades of melancholic and introspective tones” - err, right. To take on such an endeavour seems particularly foolhardy, but Hill chooses his words carefully: he doesn’t promise to write an album about the economic factors involved in the U.K/U.S “credit-crunch” (if everyone else is namedropping it these days, I can too) or the war on terror (freedom isn’t free, et cetera). No, Ken is writing about the “life we live,” and after listening to A Radiant Nothing, he seems to live a tired, cluttered collage of a life. Even though Soulwire lends itself towards “introspection,” Hill does attempt to include the listener, even down to his use of “we” in this small quotation snagged from last.fm. The problem is, while Hill may be able to “introspectively” feast on the palette of sounds available on this album, it leaves the listener hungry for an actual theme, or main idea behind the compositions.
A Radiant Nothing is an odd work, one that is hard to pin down. Of course, this could be taken as a positive statement, but Hill’s work isn’t innovative, it’s just messy. The problem can be traced down to this; Hill shovels into the work every single idea or genre trademark he can think of, and not in a wonderful, “pomo” Atlas Sound way. Instead, the album moves between moments of Eluvium inspired, but tedious, chugging piano pieces, vague stabs at Grails-esque acoustic guitar moments and ends with what sounds like backing tracks for Natalie Imbruglia. The album does have its better points though: opener “A Radiant Nothing” and the immediate tracks that follow do have a certain charm about them, but they are nothing more than rehashes of tired ideas. The mix of piano, guitar and snare-heavy drums is pleasing to the ear, but nothing that you’d purposely go out of your way to hear.
Returning to Hill’s idea of “introspection” - the way that the majority of his compositions pass over the listener left me wondering whether the album would be suited for more meditative purposes, but A Radiant Nothing seems to fill the strange void between meditation and active listening. For a start, there’s too much in the record for it to fall into the former camp and relax the listener, but then again, there are barely any interesting ideas within the album for it to fall into the latter camp. Still, whether this worries Hill is another matter, as if he’s anything like his music, the life he lives is no doubt somewhere between meditation and activity. It’s a shame, however, that his listeners may diversify and lose out.
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