RHIAN SHEEHAN: Standing In Silence
By Simon Sweetman
Wellington-based composer Rhian Sheehan has previously created bedsit electronica with ‘Paradigm Shift’, then the much larger-sounding second album ‘Tiny Blue Biosphere’, but it is ‘Standing In Silence’ that is the real shift in the paradigm, the real extension and expansion. The intent here is so grand, it is an album of numbered parts rather than song-based and named tracks. Sheehan’s sound has always hinted at film score and esoteric sound-design, but ‘Standing In Silence’ is epic and beautiful and large in scope. The pieces that form the album flow logically, ebbing and allowing the listener to move with them as an active experience. Guitars and music-boxes bump into one another, glockenspiels tinker with rhythm and melody to make collections of gorgeous sounds. I have been listening to this album a great deal and I am pretty sure it is a masterpiece – a five-star album; something every New Zealand home should have – and something so much bigger than ‘just’ a Kiwi album. •
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