Valentin Stip – Sigh 2LP
Deeply Lush and glitchy downtempo that flows at a stream like pace. Melodically Emotive with a playful sense of sound design
With eight songs clocking in at nearly an hour and sequenced as a continuous piece of music, Valentin Stip’s Sigh charts a winding path through its creator’s psyche. As Sigh unfolds, sounds become as tactile as objects: overcast electronic atmospheres rumble and swirl, minimalist piano melodies chime in the distance, and subtle programming percolates like ripples on the surface of a lake. Moments of sombre introspection give way to time-stopping beauty, as when the jet-black drone of “****” opens up into “Regards sur L’Enfance”, all sun-dappled vibraphones and sandbox melodies. On “Aletheia,” Stip subliminally intones “Everything I say is a lie” as ambient passages give way to Eastern melodies and a gently head-nodding conga beat. Sigh ends with the achingly spare, Debussy-esque chords of its title track, a heavy-hearted comedown built on little more than a single repeated piano note, pinging static, and—well in line with its creator’s musical worldview—tiny intakes of breath.