Staff Reviews

Darren Hayman - Lido

Review by George Bass

With the same homemade production as The Ship’s Piano, Lido is an hour of acoustic-electronic pop, each track swathed in nostalgia like Boards of Canada gone busking.»

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arren hayman's latest work is a multimedia meditation on the classic british institution of the lido. a beautiful, instrumental album, hayman has sought to distil his own childhood memories of the lido into intangible, fleeting moments of music. as such the album is an exploration of the nature of instrumental music, an investigation into whether such a thing can truly capture a memory, a feeling. what makes 'lido' so successful is the deeply personal touches hayman inflects on proceedings. using mostly acoustic instruments, faulty keyboards and a wonderful sense of space, each track is a stunning accompaniment to a memory you may or may not have. the quiet sounds of strings being stroked, the calming ghost of a rhodes piano floating on tremolo, 'lido' is just simply beautiful. musically, there's melancholic traces of cinematic scores by the likes of morricone or komeda, or even the still inter-play of classic 90s instrumental chicago music (chicago underground duo et al).
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