Theme Songs is essentially the next chapter following on from Camille Baziadoly and Phill Honey’s (hence the striking moniker The Filthy Honey) debut album, Fifteen. And if that album was a beguiling, almost fairy tale folktronic dreamscape, the same is certainly true of this latest EP.
“A Bath For You” opens this quartet of songs with a dreamy, night-time waltz, a blend of gentle beats and drifting trumpets, atmosphere and seduction, sitting somewhere between the sound of a 50’s French jazz cafe and the music of the Elf bands of the land of Fae.
“Tightrope” leans into the “tronic” end of “folktronic”, it is skittish and busy yet bathed in serene sonic sensations, somehow being danceable and hypnotically trance-inducing (in the very best of ways) at the same time… these two make music which is all about the attraction of opposites, the most sensual of sound clashes, and never better than here.
Envisaged as the soundscore to the conclusive scene of a movie where the heroine faces her biggest challenge and emerges victorious, “Final Scene’s” breathy, otherworldly vocals and slowly expansive sonics call all the best and most cinematic references to mind – from Enya to Cocteau Twins from Bjork to Sigur Rós – yet references only as the song finds its own way through such deep and delicate creative terrirory.
The EP ends, not with a bang…that would be too obvious, but with a beautifully creative near-silence. “Consequences” is half-heard yet fully felt, distant yet dominant, opaque yet impossible to miss; its sheer quietness speaks volumes, yet one more of the many sonic tricks they expertly play.
Camille Baziadoly, both with Phill Honey and in solo mode, has been responsible for some of the most gorgeously engaging music I have heard in the last few years, and somehow, with Theme Songs, they have pushed those already impressive creative benchmarks even higher. I can’t wait to hear what comes next.
