Five long years in the making, the Blue Nile's stellar Hats was well worth the wait; sweeping and majestic, it's a triumph of personal vision over the cold, remote calculations of technology. While created almost solely without benefit of live instruments, it is nevertheless an immensely warm and human album; Paul Buchanan's plaintive vocals and poignant songs are uncommonly moving, and his deployment of lush synth washes and electronic percussion is never gratuitous, each song instead crafted with painterly precision. Impressionistic and shimmering, tracks like "The Downtown Lights" and "From a Late Night Train" are perfectly evocative of their titles: Rich in romantic atmosphere and detail, they conjure a nocturnal fantasy world lit by neon and shrouded in fog, leaving Hats an intensely cinematic experience as well as a masterpiece of musical obsession.
well friends and fellow moggers, I returned from the video shoot in san fran with a bit of eye makeup still smudged around my temples, a headache from quick turns on the coastal road to stinson beach, ca and from having a camera inches from my face for 2 days... and it was ... fun. But who knows what the video will look like? I hope it's cool. I don't even recollect now what might be on those ...
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 "Hats")
