Chris Schlarb Twilight & Ghost Stories WB rating out of 100

The latest effort of Californian based Chris Schlarb has been germinating since 2004 and as such he has had more than ample opportunity to create his ideal album. Whether or not this is your ideal album is more questionable. As an I Heart Lung collaborator Schlarb has rarely produced anything short of exceptional, here taking the ambient and experimental nature of that act and emboldening it with countless guest musicians. Problematic however, is the confusion that this excess of talent seems to bring.

Twilight & Ghost Stories is a piece of art at its core. However Schlarb’s ambition in this area makes for a confounding listening experience, one that lacks the longevity he was undoubtedly seeking. From the moment the album introduces its array of instrumentation it is evident that Schlarb – who has taken the role as conductor as well as performer – has opted for an orchestral approach to the record. The arrangement begins as though a pit of musicians is warming for an overture – one which never arrives. Instead the instrumentation melds effortlessly from one track to another, eventually producing a scatter of climaxes. As such Twilight never formulates into anything definitive, a trait which can either appeal or repel. This is to say that on one hand Twilight acts as a general piece of ambience, but on the other hand the record has little to be specifically remembered for – something which sets the best ambient recordings apart from their milieu.

Schlarb’s enlisted help produce jazz elements which stand out above the array of other musical styles experimented with during Twilight. In particular the jazzy delivery of vocalists Liz Janes and Adrina Lucero-Schlarb make for album highlights. Both vocalists manage to fit perfectly with the rainfall instrumental backdrop, enlivening the record’s soulful mood – the shame being that their appearance is so fleeting. The album’s other use of voice, spoken word dialogue above the instrumentation on ‘Section IX’, narrates the tale of a drug accident. This darker addition seems oddly placed even on an album that dabbles in a little bit of everything.

Schlarb’s desire for contrast encompasses all of Twilight, its artwork reveals the theme of nature, yet the premise behind Schlarb’s project is his recording of city noise – 40 minutes of recorded city rainfall creates the backdrop for all the musicians on Schlarb’s record and as such formulates the base for a relaxation record. The interludes of traffic and people – a metropolitan take on field recording – produce an unwelcome distraction amongst the air of the record, this introduction of artificiality distracting from Schlarb’s hard-won natural beauty.

In the end Schlarb enlisted 50 collaborators in total on Twilight, each of whom brings his or her specific talent to the hotchpotch – all appearing alongside Schlarb himself on guitar, organ, piano and percussion. It is difficult to determine how much work each performer contributes when simply listening to this record, though knowing that several pianists or several percussionists have been used in different ways reaffirms that Schlarb has thought out each-and-every crease of this project. For the highly dedicated musical ear Schlarb’s efforts may be appreciated and awarded, but for those after a sustained and deep listening experience, you’d be better off elsewhere.