Menu ▲

EP Review: Unknown Lines “Hopes And Their Echoes”

Words by Scenewave Australia - Published on November 19, 2013

Sydney producer Ryan K Brennan aka Unknown Lines releases his first EP “Hopes and their Echoes” this Friday Nov 22. I love it, and many others will too. It’s short, but sweet, and like me, you’ll probably play it on repeat a few times.

‘Far below’ is down tempo and ambient. It’s calming, the melody is almost trance like. If Explosions in the Sky mellowed out and added some meditative vocals it would probably sound like this. Considering I adore EITS, that’s a good thing.

‘It’s Time’ continues in a similar vein, mixing ambient sounds with a subtle but constant up-tempo beat. Some beautiful little guitar licks. If this song was longer, I could really see it going somewhere pretty epic. It does however, transition smoothly onto the folky, guitar driven ‘Mistakes Of a Kind.’ Although the instrumentation and general sound is very different to the predecessing tracks, it flows really nicely. The melody is really lovely and repetitive, but not in a bad way. The trance state continues.

The subtle drums make a comeback in fourth and final track, ‘End of the beginning.’ The absolute lightness and the subtle build-ups add some serious emotional depth to it all.

All in all, this EP is wonderful. It’s mellow and content, emotional yet somehow distant. I was expecting more big build-ups and some booming, sonic explosions,  but this didn’t happen. It didn’t feel like anything was lacking though, or that the music was unfinished. Instead, it took us down a folkier path, which worked just as well.

A beautiful first release from Unknown Lines, who I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on in the future.

Stream the whole EP here
Find Unknown Lines on Facebook here

 

 

Comments are closed.