LKN "In the Leap Year" CD
[Grey Day]
I had my doubts about this solo project (LKN = Lauren K. Newman on drums, guitar, piano, bass, xylophone, and then some), stated by the artist to be a "random at best collection of some of my thousands of songs" that "serves to be disjointed and without a theme" which is to "project rhythm, spirit, passion, tone, and mood", but I have to say that this is pretty god damn good. You'd never guess from blindly listening to this that one person plays and sings damn near every note on the entire CD. All of the instrumentation is competently played, the recording is very fucking nice for this style of music, etc. It's basically heavy indie rock with a dark, somber sort of undercurrent and a variety of different little twists. You'll find plenty of warm clean guitars and thumping basslines, a few quirkier/jangly chord progressions, some angular rhythms that get more dissonant and loose/noisy, a couple of instances of sizzling distortion and quick lead lines, and so on. Most of the vocals are sung with a subtle rasp, varying between the lower and upper midrange levels, leaning towards shouting or yelling in rare cases. I fucking love the frantic finger picking and melodic arpeggios in the all too brief "To an Angel on No Condition", whereas the following 40-second "Varientnoiz" is indeed basically noise, which I'm not fond of in relation to how impressive the actual songs here are. "Sugar of Lead" is one of the loudest tracks, using more distortion, more of the yelling vocals, and more caustic guitar textures, and the singing in "Compelled" gets a little louder and more central - mingling with keyboards and leads, as well as some (perhaps) chunkier rhythms. Some of the songs towards the end of the disc drag on too long (more than six or even 10 minutes) and sort of tire me out - the 60+ minute total running time is probably my chief complaint here since there are a number of songs that don't stand up to the finer moments. The longer songs towards the close of the CD are actually very good, but they follow a number of less interesting tracks, which deadens their impact. The actual sound is really good, though. The tones are all totally natural, the vocals are mixed back into the music with a slightly distant ring (which I enjoy), and everything is thick and cohesive. I really don't think I would change anything. Were it polished it wouldn't fit at all, so I like this recording quality. But... I'm not a fan of the layout at all. Something about it seems off. The text is crisp and everything but most of the imagery is sort of... I don't know, flat? It just looks strange and out of place, sort of dull. I'm just not really caught by it at all, this music deserves a far stronger visual representation that reflects the tone of the songs. Other than that, just trim it up. Just because you've got 1,000+ songs doesn't mean you need to slap an hour's worth on one CD. Pick the best 40 minutes or so and you'd have a more powerful document of your work on your hands. I'll be interested to hear more, nonetheless. (7/10)
Running time - 62:39, Tracks: 15
[Notable tracks: Jussive, To an Angel on No Condition, I Could Not Escape the Sound, Sarah, I Adore You]
Grey Day Productions - http://www.greydayproductions.com

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