Vinyl Never Forgets - Sundays are for looking back

Blueneck – King Nine

Released 07 - 11 - 2014

Vinyl Released through: Denovali Records

Looking back on the music of Blueneck is always a treat. Any album could be plucked from their rich tapestry of work, but for me there’s something deeply intimate and delicately fragile about 2014’s King Nine. Even just to stare and fall headfirst into the albums artwork evokes images of desolation, abandonment, and that claustrophobic sense of being trapped inside someone’s dark and often unsettling creation. King Nine is very cinematic in scope, but not in the grand, sweeping sense. Its vision is nostalgic and old style, like watching an abandoned film reel flicker on cracked celluloid in a grand but empty theatre.

Musically, King Nine is a hauntingly sentimental record that unfolds like a slow-burning film. Every track is awash in brooding pianos, soft, swelling guitars, and delicate electronics that intertwine to create a sense of desolation and fragile beauty. For me however, the real beauty and power lies in the vocals. They are the centerpiece of the album, drifting in and out of the haze like a ghostly narrator. They rarely rise above a murmur, delivered with restraint that borders on fragility. At times they feel submerged beneath the weight of the instrumentation, as though they’re struggling to be heard, but this only deepens the sense of emotional pain and melancholy within the tracks. The voice becomes another texture in the landscape, blurring with the pianos and guitars rather than stifling them. To be honest, it’s not often I allow the vocals of a record have such a profound effect on me, but Blueneck have found a tone that I just cannot resist.

King Nine is a beautifully sombre album that stands as a haunting, cinematic journey which I could listen to at any time. It’s an album that trades clarity for atmosphere, leaving behind a lingering sense of beauty, wrapped in a strange sense of emptiness.

King Nine | Blueneck