“The Surrogate Piano” is an album that was released back in 2013. I’m still rather confused about just who released it however. The digital promo I got credited the album to US artist Midnight Moodswings, which is described as a side project of Radio for the Daydreamers. But when I hit the link to their homepage, an album page on Bandcamp, the album is there credited to fieldsofmigraine, which is described as “a collective of acts such as Midnight Moodswings and Tensor”. I’ll leave it to the reader to try to sort out these somewhat confusing credits, but an initial advice to whoever released this production is to make sure that an album can be connected directly to one specific artist name, and leave the connections to a biographical entry. The reason for describing this in such detail isn’t to be bothersome, but rather to make sure that if someone desires to go looking for this production that they will be able to navigate their way to the album in question without wondering if they got it wrong somewhere.
With that said, the music explored on this album is a curious one. Nocturnal is probably a key word here, with ambient and delicate pretty much describing the greater part of the music explored. Delicate wandering piano motifs, plucked acoustic guitars, softly resonating electric piano details and various additional instrument textures and electronic effects are combined into subtly dark and mournful affairs, melancholic music with an additional vibe of darkness to them if you like. Music that would be a fitting soundtrack for a night time walk. The dark isn’t the darkness of something brooding or menacing however, it’s more the mood and atmosphere you encounter at night time when everything is quiet and sounds are dampened and muted, with whatever sounds that are nearby comes across as much louder than they truly are. A tranquil mood of you like, and with appropriate mystical sounds applied now and then as well.
Some of the songs does become rather too pleasant and uniform though, lacking in contrasts, nerve, tension and unable to craft that hypnotizing presence of the mystical or exotic to maintain interest, and on a few select occasions drum patterns that are overly loud and dominant disrupts the relatively peaceful atmosphere explored by the additional instrumentation. Vocals does appear on a few of these tracks too, and like the greater majority of the instrument details they are laid back, almost sleepy. Husky if you like. And all vocals are male and female vocals combinations.
I’m not sure if any detailed descriptions concerning general style or stuff like that really is needed for this album, as my understanding of this creation is that this is an album about moods and atmospheres more than anything else. There are touches of ambient music, folk music and post rock here, possibly some traces from classical, chamber music and jazz too, but first and foremost this is an album of music that can be described as nocturnal. Careful, delicate and often relaxing music, an album made the be explored and enjoyed by those with a strong affection for the sound, feeling and atmosphere of careful, night time nocturnal moods.
My rating: 68/100
