Album review: Standish/Carlyon “Deleted Scenes”

by Whitney Richardson

Melbourne’s Standish/Carlyon, the musical body that unifies vocalist/bassist Conrad Standish & guitarist/electronics Tom Carlyon, plunges headfirst into the world of self-described “surreal chic” with their debut album, Deleted Scenes, inviting their audience to a wading pool of blind sensory experience.

The opening track on Deleted Scenes unveils a sonic environment of humidity with a sentient mist, underscored by a steady, reverberating beat that motions the listener carefully forward as it crawls along. The soothing phonetics of the vocalist and hospitable poetry of the lyrics comfort the flickering, agitated tone of the bass. Standish slips in lyrics like whispers. “How do you make it stop?” having predicted the slight discomfort experienced in the wavering vibrations, the same way a heat press responds to a sprawling day-old bruise.

Deleted Scenes grapples with what goes on in the subconscious, whether addressing commonly held experiences inescapably impressed onto the psyche or by chewing on the mental associations processed in the dream state. After you’ve overdosed on the duo’s second released single, “Gucci Mountain,” you can expect “Moves, Moves,” to revive you. “Moves, Moves” is the album’s closest offering to a dance track, comparatively more upbeat than the rest. The rhythm hurriedly moves between comprehensive mutterings to what can only be described as the bleary enactments of a short, flush psychodrama.

The sound of water pools together the album- waves drip in the beats- and produce a feverish mental space ripe with clammy, wrinkling fingers and the rush of unheated water spilling from a showerhead. The product is as electrifying as it is familiar. If you think you would like the surprise of a cool slug wetting a stamp to your ear drum or could stand a swim through the less traveled rapids of your mind, please do yourself a favor and open up to the world Deleted Scenes creates.

Release date: May 14