Let me give you little riddle: it’s poppy and so sweet it will make your teeth crack?
No idea? Try once more. Yes indeed, it’s Sun, the project of Oren Ambarchi and Chris Townend. This selftitled release on Staubgold is a re-release of the original release om Australia´s Preservation Records. Both Mabarchi and Townend are from Australia’s experimental music scene. Ambarchi released albums through Touch, Staalplaat, ERS, and many more labels. Townend has been active in the experimental music scene as producer and played in several bands.
So Ambarchi and Townend sound laidback sweet and poppy together. Sadly it’s not particulary good. None of the songs are terribly original, though entertaining mostly, as long as you can stand the extreme sweetness, the slide guitars, and pointless guitar solos. Some of the songs have a touch of melancholy in them, but whenever that happens, it’s skillfully broken down by happy organs, yet another slide guitar, or a completly inapropriate guitar solo, like in the song ‘I don’t mind'(and what a waste that is to kill a beautiful song like that, in the last 30 seconds!).
But there is more to this release then just this. It comes with a remix cd that features remixes by artists like Pimmon, Rafael Toral, Mapstation and Hrvatski. Some of these remixes are actually rather nice. The songs seem to loose their sweetness a bit, and the remixing artists take out the good parts and create decent songs out of them. But sadly not all remixes are like that. Most remixes seem to be pointless, and not much better then the original songs. The remixes can’t make up for the original songs.
My advice? Stay away from this cd. There are better melancholic pop albums out there.