Review: Huey Walker - Blearies

When Huey Walker’s melodious tones rise out of silence and return to it, I see the delicate little coils and thrusts of seahorses. The head poking forward as synthesisers and hazy guitar notes whine in the upper frequencies. The body catching up as bass rushes underneath to catch the more brittle, aloft activity. The synthesisers plodding in rhomboid arpeggiations like plankton matter dropping in a light shower. There are choral surges that smother the scene like lights cutting through the water, and dampened white noise that fizzes like a school of bubbles escaping from beneath.

There is narrative here. The initial illusion of a 20-minute tidal plateaux starts to dissipate as distortion fizzes in chemical reaction, and sine waves squirm like crustaceans leaping unexpectedly out of their shells, sending the rest of the oceanic eco-system into a domino effect response. In particular, I find myself transfixed by those closing three minutes: the point at which all of the drama, loose echoes, evaporated voices and pocket-sized electronic glissandos begin to shrink onto the kernel of one reverberant guitar, spluttering into cavernous reverb as Huey Walker scrapes against strings and lets chords drool out. The piece ends when all of the liquid is gone. Blearies is dehydrated and crisp; a mere husk.