The Sleeping Cliffs - Forget What I Said (self-released)

After lulling us into a brief sense of understated security, “Forget What I Said” launches into a mercurial melting pot of cavernous guitar chords and squalling, searing, screaming sonics and shimmering indie licks. And, just when you are beginning to get comfortable with this beguiling blend of less and more, light and shade, on and off, The Sleeping Cliffs pull the rug of expectation from under your feet. And they do this by dispensing, for now at least, with those wailing riffs, and the song returns to a chiming blend of cinematic avant-gardening and baroque orchestral charm. Most unexpected.

And, having got used to expecting the unexpected, the almost expected happens, continuity…in a very loose sense, but the song continues to ebb and flow between these sonic states, finding a sort of harmony in the flux between beauty and audacity, muscle and melody, strangeness and charm.

At times, “Forget What I Said” feels as if two songs are playing at the same time, or perhaps more as if one is playing inside the other, the music both complimentary and colliding, a deliberate harmonious cacophony, that has somehow found an equilibrium that suits both parties…and I mean that in the most positive of ways.

There is a famous book called “The City and The City” by China Mieville. It is set in a place where two cities coexist and are intertwined and intersected by each other, its population sharing the same streets and living within touching distance, yet the two very different cultures hardly acknowledge each other’s existence. If that author had chosen music as his creative outlet rather than words, a song like this could have been the result.

As the saying goes, opposites attract.

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