Sometimes old sounds can be worth revisiting, especially if they're molded by a particularly sure hand. Newcomer Gacha Bakradze, who hails from Tbilisi, Georgia and splits his time between Paris and his native city, isn't interested in carving out a signature, cutting-edge sound. Instead, his debut LP, Send Two Sunsets, floats atop a bath of well-worn nostalgia that, by definition (and purpose), asks little of its audience except to be soothed.
Over the course of its relatively brief nine tracks, Send Two Sunsets oscillates between low-key house ("Street Talk"), bubbling ambient ("Blue Distance"), and meditative pop ("Send Two Sunsets"), but all share similarly aquatic presets. Album opener "Abandoned City" falls into the first category, with New Age arpeggios and no percussive elements to speak of. It's a sound that brings to mind Jürgen Müller's Science of the Sea, an album that had originally been marketed as a rediscovered record from the early '80s only to be revealed later to be a modern production.
Here, there's a similar feeling of productions that have been submerged and forgotten only to be unearthed decades later. "Waterfall", a gorgeous track that also features Beridze, shimmers like refracted sunlight. Then there's "Let Me Love You", an amalgam of deep house and deconstructed R&B that sets indistinct vocals amidst piano and understated percussion; repeat listens reveal a track not only exceedingly pretty, but disarmingly soulful. More often than not, Sunsets continues to reveal new facets the more time you spend with it, the familiar giving way to deeper emotional undercurrents just below the surface.
