I came across the #mayvinylchallenge on Instagram, and thought that was a good way to find my way back (yet again) to this blog. I’m posting my entries here, but thought it would be nice to add some brief notes here about my choices. Day 1 was about One Album Wonders, I was helpless, unable to pick anything other than A Holy Land Beneath a Godless Sky, the sole record from Sans Soleil. It’s a gloriously somber, elegiac record, one I would have never discovered were it not for the boundless taste of Mr. Erik Highter, facilitator of so much of what I’ve fallen for over the last few years.

Featuring members of Dead to a Dying World, the music on A Holy Land Beneath a Godless Sky is suitably heavy and epic, trading in post rock, doom, and sludge, interspersed with a sense of Americana thanks to the choice of having the lead melodic instrument be the viola. in the melodies of the strings. Eva Vonne brings a palpable sense of yearning on tracks like opener “A Holy Land” and “An Umbral Plain” and mixed with the more traditional heavy guitars and drum attack you get a potent album that’s capable of rocking as much as reclining.

Does that make sense? I don’t know. What I do know is that Sans Soleil has the unique ability to convey multiple feelings in the same song. Depending on the day I can lay back and let the music wash over me in a mournful embrace, on other days I can whip my head along to the drive of the songs.

Sometimes I do both.