If you ever want to get absolutely absorbed in feeling like shit, you don’t need a cabin in the woods. A flat in Berlin while the temperature drops to -20 degrees will do just fine if you want to get closer to your inner Bon Iver (that is if you’re not at the Berghain, trying to tap your inner dopamine-supplies). That’s probably exactly what Kyson experienced. The producer was born in an Australian seaside-town called Adelaide and is now living in Berlin. »The Water‘s Way« is his way of processing his first European winter through beats and vocals. What came out are sounds much more similar to Bon Iver (»Shadows Cross«) or Baths, rather than to his label-colleagues on FoF Music. However, the record refuses to settle on a clear emotional state – it kind of floats along, takes up moods and atmospheres of all kinds. Melancholy: yes; sadness: no. At most times, »The Water‘s Way« sways through warmish realms. What keeps the different moods together are analog synthesizers: Kyson makes them pass each other like flying clouds, building long stretched formations, sometimes overlapping and sometimes separating but never disappearing through the whole album length. This way, the record becomes a river (according to the title the least that can be expected), which gets vitalized through the live-musicians Scott Can Manen and Sam Rogers. You don’t see a MacBook in front of you when hearing the drums, but rather imagine drumsticks dispersing the dust on the membranes (»No Such Thing«). Of course, Kyson, Van Manen and Rogers sample and program away; but the also sing, tinker, knock and rattle. And that’s what makes this record great.
The Water’s Way
