wayne phoenix: soaring wayne phoenix story the earth

Bit of an enigma this one, the debut release -- a decade in the making -- from an artist about which little is known, Wayne Phoenix. soaring wayne phoenix story the earth is a fascinatingly intimate yet elusive record honed over years by a trained pianist recording a kind of all-encompassing audio diary that is reminiscent of everything from Klein to Burial, to RZA's incredible Ghost Dog original soundtrack. After marinating in the archive while trends passed by, the fleeting stop/start collage of honest humility and ephemeral thoughts in story the earth resembles a time capsule of a former, or parallel, self; one the artist is only now at ease to come terms with. Vacillating moments of profound lucidity and penetrative pangs of anxiety, Wayne lays his soul bare in that most vulnerable way that can sometimes lead to great art, and finds himself in solid, empathetic company among Halcyon Veil's sensitively intuitive spirits such as Myslma, Mhysa, and of course, Rabit. One of those debuts that feels uncannily familiar on the first encounter, the album dredges a remarkable and unshakeable depth of feeling and human insight via its mazy tile of vignettes, drifting from softly textured, deep blue witching hour logic to more grizzled, Tricky-esque realizations and glossolalic expressions that practically, poetically say as much as his legible lyrics. In between, pockets of fractured music box melody and sorely textured beats flower and weed in the gaps, sounding something like RZA's Ghost Dog OST adapted from dilapidated NYC rooftops to the same drizzly London streets inhabited by Burial, Klein, and Mica Levi. Maybe best of all though, there's very little pretense to this record. It simply sounds like the artist is working out their feelings through music in an exposed, genuine way that doesn't matter if nobody else ever hears it. Wayne Phoenix's frayed, dreamlike tapestry of self-reflections are set to become part of our contemporary consciousness in 2020. Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. transparent yellow vinyl/ltd 300.