This new Ep from Julian Shah-Taylor unfortunately lives up to its title The Torment Suite rather too well for me, an sadly I guess for many others, listening to this will be Torment. As this is indebted rather too heavily to the Tonight/Never Let Me Down era of David Bowies career that made me and thousands of others go rushing for the door to never buy any of his new music again for decades in my case.
The Ep opens with All Good Soldiers a slow meandering bass led song with vocals heavily influenced by the slowest most painful songs on David Bowies last two albums Black Star and The Next Day, unfortunately the guitar part seems to be straight out of the Reeves Gabrels house of horrors, this song is slight and forgettable and the lyrical content about being in lockdown for me gets lost in the reference to a sound I never liked when eventually it leads to an absurdly widdly freak out bit where the vocals suddenly go all The Darkness on us.
Beautiful World is a totally background sub Tonight era Bowie, which for me was exactly the point that I stopped listening to Bowie's new material having decided it was an absolute travesty compared to what had come before, so hearing songs that sound like that will never go down well with me.
Eyes of Orion has some nice strings that work well with Eva Gore's vocals and this song at least doesn't sound like the worst 80's music. Easily the best thing on the ep and the one tune that doesn't torment me in any way. This is more sophisticated dance pop.
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We then get a far too faithful cover of David Bowies execrable Loving The Alien this in in hock mainly to the Extended dance mix rather than the ludicrous dub mix or the plain album version, that sadly I still own. I hate this song so much that it's hard for me to be objective about a cover of it other than to say if that's your favorite era of Bowie you will love this, just don't make me listen to it again anytime soon.
The Ep closes with Beautiful World (Phantom Funk Tall T Shan Remix) that was apparently done on an I-pad and he turns the tune into a sleek modern dance pop song that would go down well with anyone wondering what it would sound like if you got Calvin Harris to re-mix a bunch of mid 80's Bowie outtakes, couple of cool spoken word samples that get buried beneath the dancefloor beats.
If this sounds like it's cool to you then find out more at https://www.julianshahtayler.com/ https://thesingularitymusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-torment-suite
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