Caught at the waist, two sweater-clad youths of pasty complexion clasp hands, looking out onto a fallow landscape, dotted by limping clouds. This image which adorns Eingya, the second fledgling from Keith Kenniff under the Helios moniker – who also crafts somber piano vignettes in the guise of Goldmund – proves indicative of the sentimental, though focused palette of textures that are organized into finespun, agreeable skeletons, and which build a poignant arc and hold one’ attention throughout this albums eleven track excursion.
Stately, almost ceremonious piano chords, sloshy beats, and the winsome puddling of chimes are couched in steadily swelling drones. It is an arrangement that is deceptively simple, and it is a credit to Keith Kenniff’ compositional ability that these pieces, which at the surface seem to be doing very little indeed, are below brimming with slowly evolving detail and blooming melody. Nearing the end of the album, specifically on ¨The Toy Garden¨ and ¨Paper Tiger¨, these hesitant, slowly flourishing textures are doused in a sleek veneer, and come across as simply spray-on. Kept afloat for minutes on end by the incessant thud of a drum machine and gaseous, long-held organ chords, such songs do not hold up against the majestic sonic cloak of the previous works, and remind only of the cookie-cutter carboard images which might grace the set of a junior school play.
More often than not, though, the dark froth of piano, guitar, and electronic texture manage to escape this cloying sweetness. ¨Halving The Compass¨, displays a mournful economy with its use of the piano, letting it murmur underneath a ringing guitar motif, and only near the later portion of the piece allowing it to chime in an almost celebratory manner. Other works, namely, ¨For Years And Years¨, are largely beatless, freeflowing streams of crackling, lukewarm analogue synths which carry hanging bass chords in its current, and conjure rather affecting dreamlike moods. In like manner, the slightly doleful, slightly gratified smile that is written across the lazily agile guitar picking of ¨Emancipation¨ lies in a nether-region between sleep and wakefulness. Here and elsewhere, a poised, often richly nuanced environment is presented, rife with nostalgic melodies that glow like white stones underwater.
