Every idiot is obsessed with their roots, placing themselves in the grand scheme of things, defining and differentiating themselves: this is me, that’s not me! Origins! It’s been a hot topic in recent years. How refreshing it is when someone returns to that brutal yet magical place of childhood/adolescence without turning it into a treatise on their own identity. Sun sits down on a hill and says: »I Can See Our House From Here«. It’s an exclamation of childlike naivety and enthusiasm—both of which the sound translates directly into a melancholy that only adults can possess, having painfully internalised the passage of time and its consequences. With banjo and trumpet, the opening notes convey a sense of the moment of perception. It’s something as fragile as a porcelain vase, yet carries the weight of the world. Other well-known instrumental dreamers have expressed this before. Four Tet in 2003 with »Rounds«, Gold Panda seven years later with »Lucky Shiner«. These are two albums that make the evening sun fall through the rye with their loving miniature sounds.
»I Can See Our House From Here« picks up where these albums left off. Andreas Haberl (see Alien Ensemble, Notwist) aka SUN has also created pieces for his solo debut that are characterised by the glockenspiel: it’s about the fullness of smallness. The hill in front of your childhood home. Wandering through its rooms. Nothing big, but so much happening inside. SUN expresses this by constantly changing and blending tempos, creating arcs of tension; drums come and go, synth pads overlay the organic sounds, samples enrich the everyday with just enough of the otherworldly to allow the inner world to merge with the depiction of space. It’s sensitive, sincere, devoted and three or four tracks too long.
