
Thousand Suns: Fascination
By Tony Parker
Thousand Suns is the songwriting vehicle for guitarist Warren King and also features Maya Haettenschwiller on vocals and acoustic guitar, along with percussionist Emmanuelle Svartz. Together with producer/bassist Lorenzo Buhne they create a folk/rock/world hybrid that instrumentally has a lo-fi sparseness driven by Svartz’ djembe and King’s guitar, yet vocally has a richness that can attributed to Haettenschwiller’s vocal charms. Lyrically the album’s impetus came from the death of King’s father and this is reflected in the downbeat and moody tone to the majority of songs. Combined with the stripped back nature of the performances this leads to a feeling of sameness that could have been avoided had the songs been fleshed out instrumentally. Only the upbeat Burning Orange with its use of drums and a catchy chorus and the afro-beat of Something Beautiful Exists escape the minimalist approach and point to what might have been.
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