Impossible Worlds (FALSE WALLS fw11) from Kevin Daniel Cahill arrived from an address in Faversham and has a large bird on the cover plus parades of figures in silhouette painted by Brian McHenry, and there are more artworks by him inside the little booklet. This isn’t Kevin Cahill of Toronto who also goes by name of Downer Canada and Family Ravine, but is another performer possibly English or Scottish who recorded this in Hackney in 2022 using his guitars, effects pedals, and tape loops. He may be classically trained too. I like the Canadian Cahill a lot, this record not so much, but it’s my own fault for getting confused.
The first piece is a very long suite including sections on ‘Procession’ and ‘Lamentation’, which starts off quite interesting and vague and suggestive of all kinds of human despair and bleakness, but it soon turn into very ordinary ambient droning – those rich, choral effects produced by massed overdubs, and becoming very sentimental to boot. The same reservations apply to ‘Caoineadh’. I realise this is probably intended to be emotional and stirring music, intended to make the listener feel heroic as they overcome another of life’s obstacles, but for me Cahill stays too long in this same self-regarding place, and is apparently unable to move out of it. He calls this album “an amalgamation of musical responses to beautiful and painful life experiences,” and “a melancholic traversing of tonal landscapes that resonate deep inside of me, like vague truths”.
Quite nice packaging, but all the artworks with their half-suggested stories and buried symbols just say the same thing ten times over, much like the music. (17/05/2023)