A lot of effort doesn’t have to pay off. A lot of effort is just that… a lot of effort. So, you’ve got to be having fun exerting that effort so that if it flops, you still have the fond memories to keep you going.
Sun Lite is from Lier, Belgium. A self-acclaimed one-man band. A producer, vocalist, and keyboardist. Sun is someone who has a lot of fun doing what he does, and it shows. He lacks respect for genre boundaries; he doesn’t necessarily care to confuse his listeners, and he definitely gets his kicks from musically being all over the place.
On this full-length LP, ‘Out your earplugs, off your blinkers,‘ Sun Lite boasts a wide range of talents that he utilizes to great effect, but he also showcases a lot of areas where there’s a lot left to be desired. Jumping from one style to the next with great ease, sometimes during the span of a single song, which is very impressive. An amazing composer, the way the light and dark sections blend in numerous songs is joyful and immersive.
His ear for sounds, though, is where things tend to fall apart most often. It’s been said and repeated that good sounds are not necessarily expensive ones, so the lack of funds (if that’s the case) will not be an excuse for tinny sounds that are obviously computer-generated. On tracks ‘Pig Brother’ & ‘It Only Makes You Fart, Honest!’, an electric guitar is featured that sounds harsh and brittle and untrue. Again, on track eight titled, ‘Wildfire’, the mark is completely missed with sounds.
The riffs all over the album (minus those on ‘Wildfire’) are greatly entertaining, followed most of the time by solid beats and electronic bass stabs to create a meal of hyperactive music that’s fun to listen to but won’t necessarily leave a mark on the imagination. My personal favorite is ‘Movin’ On’ a psychedelic/space rocker that soars for its runtime with proggy drum beats, funk guitars, and fantastic electronic bass riffs that repeat and overlap in a cacophony of crazed vibes. A section near the end that features a Leslie speaker turns the space rock all the way to eleven.
Track six, titled ‘Dog & Pony Show’ is an eleven-minute behemoth that starts uninspiringly, but ends up being the fullest meal on the album. With strong influences from King Crimson, Pink Floyd, and late Led Zeppelin, the song jumps with fluidity from one section to the other, exploring the beautiful atmospheres created by the Mellotron and featuring the only acoustic/classical guitar on the whole album, and the only guitar that does not sound computer-generated.
Many, many ideas find their way into this offering. Most of them work beautifully, but are hampered almost all the time by the lack of production assets, or maybe Sun Lite doesn’t really care enough about what we all think, because it’s very apparent that through it all, he was having a blast, and as a musician myself, I can say with confidence that this is all that matters.
