Edgeland

Even if your knowledge of Underworld is cursory at best (re: you knew ‘that drag boy song from Trainspotting’), then Edgeland, the debut solo album Karl Hyde, will still comes as quite the surprise.

While Hyde has always been the artsy, singing yin to Rick Smith’s structural yang in the influential electronic outfit that earned him his reputation, his first solo album under his own name – co-produced with composer Leo Abrahams – lets his primary preoccupations flourish.

Chiefly, his intriguing lyric writing, building abstract words from snatches of overhead conversation, and ambient-leaning songcraft as it takes in an aural tour of England’s geography through textured electronics and alluring soundcapes – at once broken and beautiful.

It also surreptitiously channels Hyde’s youth, with the fingerprints of many great English bands left lingering on the album’s sonic touches.

The brogue-like edge to his voice, in combination with some elastic phrasing, recalls Morrissey, especially on the saccharine underpinnings of ‘Angel Café’ and the lush ‘The Boy With The Jigsaw Puzzle Fingers’.

Elsewhere the experimental ghost of latter-day Talk Talk haunts the opening ‘The Night Slips Us Smiling Underneath Its Dress’ and evocative ‘Cut Clouds’.

At other times (‘Your Perfume Was The Best Thing’, ‘Shoulda Been A Painter’) Edgeland evokes that magical point of transition when XTC migrated from new wave to calmer, more pastoral climes; taking their keen pop nous as an essential souvenir.

All these touchstones are merely grabs that fail to properly describe the unique musical leap in maturity Hyde has made look so graceful. It’s all there in the crowning achievement of ‘Shadow Boy’, the penultimate track taking in the album’s full sonic palette, from a soft breath to a shuddering bellow over eight expansive minutes.

Will it disappoint Underworld’s club-happy clientele? Inevitably, but let them mutter. Here, Hyde has crafted a powerfully unique record whose qualities – mellow, lush, abstract – are high in conception and execution.

Karl Hyde plays the Melbourne Recital Centre on May 25th and the Sydney Opera House on May 27th. Tickets and details at: http://www.karlhyde.com/

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