Suncastle - Nah (2020)

George Evans AKA Suncastle is a prolific young man from Manchester, UK. "Nah" is Suncastle's sixth (!) album with Triplicate Records in two years. What we absolutely love about his music is that each album is uniquely original and builds upon the last. His trademark playful melodies and themes leave you feeling immersed in a new and unfamiliar futuristic world. Repeated listens are generously rewarded.

~Michael Southard, Triplicate Records
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Suncastle's sixth release on Triplicate records brings a pure outburst of fantasy electronica. Intelligent craftsmanship coupled with loads of experimental flair. Starting things off with the catchy hook laden 'Bad Blimpz', we are quickly captured and then pushed without notice into the brilliant 'Confusion Tape 93', a pulsating journey into the center of Suncastle's musical world. Utilizing a clever balance of melody and electronic sonics we are lured into the exquisity paced and spacey flow of 'Kakuzato', bringing the listener deeper into Nah's unique territory. 'Carbon Dog' weaves magically into a fluid alignment of slightly spacey, slightly noisy musical ambience. Suncastle's trademark sense of humor is in full effect on 'Into the Nothing' as imaginative synth sequences take center stage, perfectly accented by the percussion, leading naturally into the lazy-day ambience of "Death Comes Faster than You Think'. 'Superdraft Cosmos' plucks away like some exotic music box opened within a lucid dream, the sequenced arps moving joyfully within the electro-rhythms with mathematical precision. There is a thread of sonic beauty that runs throughout Nah that brings a smile to the ears. As we enter track 8, 'Polygon Son', we ride waves of driftiness accented by a brisk series of beats playing against the slightly dark, slightly quirky keyboard sounds. 'Cone Logic' brings to us off-key melodies working against its well thought-out drum sequences. 'Convalescence' finishes off the album with a brilliant, inscrutable vibe, creating the perfect closer for one of Suncastle's most inviting and enjoyable releases, a key album in the bright progression of an ongoing musical journey.

~Belial Pelegrim
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NAH is the light at the end of the dismal tunnel that was my 2019, and the seventh Suncastle LP if anyone's counting. Equal parts paranoid and optimistic. Short but far-reaching, ten pretty Winter songs, sequenced in a order that shoots for tight cohesion, albeit in a somewhat bi-polar fashion. Some recall the cosmic loneliness of Galaxy of Terror, others the meditative psychedelia of Minotaur Golf. It's probably a bit like Basecamp too in some unquantifiable way, let's face it, there's an atmosphere being worked with on all these recent albums that doesn't deviate too much...

OR DOES IT? Yes, turns out there's some weird stuff on here. Care has been taken to ensure each song goes in a different direction to the last. There's a lot of styles being attempted in only 34 minutes and there's only one way to find out whether it works!
(it does)

~Suncastle