Review: Aquarelle - August Undone
August Undone bursts upward; vertical jets of guitar resound in celebration, as an orchestra seeping through a white noise waterfall. Like a homage to the oft under-estimated might of the liquid form (crescendos materialising as pressurised fountain explosions, weighty major-key tides rolling in unison and almighty crashing waves coming down from immeasurable heights), or perhaps a soundtrack to the joyous divine intervention of the water Gods, the album exists as purity and power; as delicate emotion rolled around thick, surging seas.
Melody is here, but it floats upon the surface like driftwood – guided and often buried by the layers of guitar and piano that smear rhythm and repetition into intangible forms, acting as the one fragment of penetrative coherence nestled on an ocean of the blurred and half-said. Its presence is too subtle and light to anchor August Undone, and instead it submits itself to the free-flowing fizz and glisten, like objects swallows by the unfathomable expansiveness of the landscape they occupy. Aquarelle achieves an organic fluidity that can surely only originate from a clear and instinctive creative process, like light pouring continuously forth from Ryan Potts’ mouth.