Sometimes we say that music takes you places. Close your eyes and you could be... anywhere really. This is rarely truly the case. I feel I can safely say that it is the case with After Life, an album by Suplington that I've been returning to regularly throughout the year. Initially this was because I'd said I would review it, but then it became a joy because I loved it so much.
At the beginning of 'Oceanic Incitation' waves leap just as they seem to do on the album's cover. Darting, abstract violin hurtles up and down, evoking harsh wind and sand in your eyes. A rumbling flute line ebbs and flows like the waves, eventually fluttering its way into play and calling to mind, for me anyway, the sounds of Henry Mancini and Richard Rodgers. Incidentally, is that a word? Incitation? Or was it a typo (Invitation) and did they decide to run with it?
The bells and drums on 'Seagulls In Your Mind' (the title of which surely plays on Boards of Canada's 'An Eagle In Your Mind') feel like wind chimes and rattles on the cusp of twilight, or possibly at the hottest part of the day. Close your eyes and you decide. 'Chimerical Recital' is hazy and unfocused, birds singing over rambling piano. The strange meanderings of the mind during a sun-kissed afternoon snooze. The strange confusion one feels on waking. The flute in 'Limbo State' sings like a solitary voice calling on a beach, going from a kind of lonesomeness to communal happiness. ‘Procession’ feels like an elegy. Whether that's for a holiday, a friend, a country, the album itself, it's impossible to say. But it's a gentle, beautiful closing piece.
All of this feels like a cold and objective description of a subjective feeling. The music is lush, calming, beautiful, and it's so ... nice? dare I say, that it's hard to write about it in any way other than the visuals it evokes in my mind as I sit on a train and close my eyes.