Some music recipes remain a mystery after a tasting. That is what an experience of listening to Sun Lite feels like. An enigma in composition and as a personality, you can feel the oddity of the compositions, derived from experiences. What influences the sound, is a life unknown itself, and we are lucky to peer into the journal of some artists. This is Unicorns & Dragons. 

I pride myself on feeling frisson, it’s a rare phenomenon. Certain compositions immediately trigger it, and the opening track was enough. The Night Hag feels like a portrait of a personality, slinking through the darkness. The arrangement itself has the tension within the strings, of high and low frequencies. As the monologue continues in the background, the mystery is contained within the confines of this track. A wonderful way to begin an album.

Day Stallion drags us into the wild. It is a groovy number, elucidating the different instruments this one-man band can compose through. The distant, somewhat muted vocals bring a lazy infatuation, making for a cool single to dance to. Trolls fishes through the jewel box to find another gem. It has a bluesy, The Wall kind of groove. Travelling through genres of different types, someone like Sun Lite just operates on the feel of the song in the moment. The result is a refreshingly unique take on classic sounds.

Through the plains of sound

As we arrive at the epic centre of the album, it is important to see how we’ve come this way. Being a more meditative piece, it is conceptual and more avant-garde in its execution style. The vocals are a deeper, more earnest timbre than the one heard in Troll. The guitar flourishes come as transitions, within moments that slowly move from this saloon blues feel to an electronica paradise. It is an immensely moving track, if you pay attention to the movements and moments.

These niches of sound and their exploration is something Sun Lite wants you to be a part of. The special attention given to the feel rather than the positioning of a sound within a song is something that comes with experience. In Grimble Grumble, a darker, funky sound makes way. The bassline is dominant, stepping on the slow moving synths in the background, giving a Middle East tonality to the whole composition. 

Through the eyes of time

L4-L5 goes back into that Pink Floyd prog-rock sound. Sun Lite does tend to sound like Gilmour in instances, but it is the role of an inventor. Once again, it is the bass that creates the funky background, something that becomes the audio canvas. Dipping his toes into fantasy again, Unicorns & Dragons creates another electronic styled confluence of waves. It is fun to hear, to devote your attention to the symbolic sustenance of the song and the eventual atrophy. Like nature, it is joy to behold its life.

Why…creates a jazzy hypothetical stage show, a spectacle to remember. It is exciting and catches you off guard. It feels like you were part of a live moment, where Sun Lite came to perform his thoughts within music. By the time you hear Not the End, the acoustic track puts all of this in perspective. Whatever moments were captured, you have heard an audited essence of them. They do, however, hold the truth in their purest form.

This would make for a great conceptual animated fantasy film, like The Wall. There is enough imagery to create a thematic paradise that exists within itself. Unicorns & Dragons is a treasure to explore and enjoy, for any genre lover of every kind.