The worlds created by Ran Slavin are all part of the nocturnal universe and this album is definitely one of them. All twelve Bittersweet Melodies is a collection of unique stories between sunrise and sunset. Each of the tracks is unlike the other, some bitter and some sweet, as the title of the album suggests. Each track is a piece of a jigsaw, fitting in the front picture of the album art – a blurry image of a night city and a tropical island postcard from the 80s.
Our trip starts with the first track Saturday’s Dress. As the track progresses we leave the real world for the imaginary one.Category: Murdered Entertainers – is the soundtrack of a crime story with a twisted plot, eerie loops and paths, atmosphere noire. In Disruptive Lounge we hear the sounds of a string ethnic instrument mixed with the sounds of tuning of a radio, which does not get tuned in the end and instead untunes the whole track.
In Fake Sunsets we take a walk in the darkest hours before sunrise, listening to the music from some old movie and get to the next track Dubai Dawn. Sinatra Was Here reminds of Frank Sinatra in a wonderful film Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), where he had a short, but remarkable role.
Listening this album over and over again, it feels like the album describes a point, where the night turns into sunrise and back into the night. Slavin’s music calls for adventurous associations with illusionary and surreal cinema. Trying to understand this album is the same like wandering the streets of the city, which never existed. Slavin’s music is highly intellectual and urbanistic, it matches the pulse of the modern life, and yet there is always a mystery there, like a street close that you heard so much about, but could never find, no matter how hard you tried.
via Data.Wave