So many releases, so little time but I felt obliged to find time for Gienlyd, who was here last September with his debut single, Blid | Blød (‘Gentle : Soft’), which sounds like something The Flowerpot Men used to say on British TV’s ‘Watch with Mother’ children’s programme back in the day. Or was it flob adob?
It was a song I likened to ‘Tubular Bells’, which does rather give it some gravitas, don’t you think.
Now Gienlyd returns with ‘Highway hypnosis’, which he intriguingly describes with exactly the same language that he used for ‘Blid | Blød’ – “the perfect companion on your next road trip” with “cyclical melodies perfectly intertwining” then “the music was made in the hopes that the listener can use it to catch their breath in the hectic reality we live in. It’s also well suited as background music and for use in relaxation and meditation.”
What can I say about this one? It makes you think about a runaway train at first rather than a road trip and you won’t be able to relax easily. The Cannonball Express with Casey Jones at the helm. If it has to be a road trip then Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ would have to be the choice, the defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drugs as they tour the good old USA.
It builds and builds in a way few can pull off because it is incessant, with no choruses or bridges. It will hook you in. New Order could do it. (Hook, geddit?) And so can Gienlyd.
Find him on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gienlyd/
