Sunday Munich
Pneuma
Kyan
What if you could take all the hatred and despair the world has dumped on you, all the put-downs and lies, the violated childhood memories and demolished hopes of a loving-couple happy ending – take it all in your hands and tear it apart into ugly red blots and jagged shards, then throw it back into their smug faces, twisted and dark with your righteous anger, but turned beautiful now, too, by your art?
That’s the way Pneuma – the debut album from Sunday Munich – feels. While Sarah sings about memories that cut to the bone, about trying to rescue just one happy dream from a child’s nightmare life, about a lover who listens with his groping hands but doesn’t hear, about how it feels to feel ugly, Avis (of Allegory) constructs an alternately hypnotic and fiercely chaotic musical setting around her, starting with cello and keyboard, then jumping from gentle guitar to overpowering dub beats, from throbbing bass to buzzing static. Heavy on the electronics but also on human emotion, Pneuma bites and whispers, slaps and caresses, toe-taps and self-mutilates.
“In the Same Way” shows how all this comes together, starting with Sarah’s voice distant and vulnerable, backed with mournful cello and slow guitar; then angry staticked beats come pounding head over heels as “he strokes me… much too late to find what he’s reaching for,” because the love is already long gone. Kyan Records, P.O. Box 6745, Clearwater, FL 33758-6745
