Nate Connelly - A Dream About Being Lost (2015)

While 2014 already has a few too many scuffs on it to be termed box-fresh, and the unremitting sogginess has stifled most new year excitement, there’s still plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the music heading our way over the next 12 months. So, having celebrated the best albums, tracks, videos, gigs and artwork of last year (and slated the overrated), what better way to move on than by making 2014′s first Album of the Week something that came out in, um, 2013…

Still, it’s Nate Connelly’s fault for releasing his debut on December 23rd, after we’d already clocked off work to gorge on Baileys and brandy butter for a fortnight. Yet the bizarre decision to launch ‘A Dream About Being Lost’ in the cultural downtime of late December doesn’t mean it deserves to be overlooked; quite the opposite in fact.

Having largely concentrated on scoring short films (and one feature) since graduating from Leeds College Of Music in 2003, Connelly first came to our attention as a solo artist after we featured the disturbing (and appropriately cinematic) video for his ‘You Echo’ single. Yet it was the music that had us looking forward to the LP. While press release comparisons tend to be wildly misleading (“‘X’ sounds like Frank Black fronting The Velvet Underground!” – no it doesn’t, it sounds like Frank Sidebottom fronting the band from Velvet Goldmine, who’ve all contracted dysentery), the stated touching points of James Blake, Thom Yorke and Bonobo weren’t actually that far off the mark.

The maudlin tone and crisp, broken robot beat of opening track ‘Some Faith’ certainly explains (musically if not vocally) the Thom Yorke comparisons, although things are a lot sparser here than on any of his solo or Atoms for Peace efforts. A shadowy, subtly soulful female vocal bobs up and down over the top, culminating in an understated, modern take on trip-hop (admittedly a phrase that might have some people running for the hills).

‘You Echo’ comes next, and, stripped of the brutal video, the quality of the song (like the protagonist of said clip) is left bare. Thankfully, in this case that’s a good thing. The Blake influence is the prominent one here, with muted, echoing piano and tender vocal repetition gradually building up in intensity, but without ever threatening to wash anything overboard.

Tracklist:

01. Some Faith (4:21)
02. You Echo (4:24)
03. Tired Waiting (5:43)
04. Similar to a Simulated Simulation (3:03)
05. Would Where I Belong (3:59)
06. Safe from Twelve (3:17)
07. I Form a Club (3:31)
08. A Dream About Being Lost (4:15)
09. Deadmen (5:24)
10. Arkham (3:48)