Through the interaction of dulcet textures and harmonious melodies, infused with Greek bouzouki string plucks, sporadic piano and violin, enigmatic Alexandria, Virginia born musician Gabriel Brady laments the everyday with daring simplicity on his lustrous ambient / alt-folk debut »Day-blind« for the Tonal Union imprint.

Attracted by the sensibilities of old French film scores, especially those by Michel Legrand and Jean Constantin and the sheer simplistic beauty of forbearing composers Debussy, Satie and Ravel, Brady cites inspiration in a warm earnestness to the melodies; and the complete, unmediated feeling that such scores and orchestrations create. Written and produced in his bedroom dorm at Harvard, in Cambridge Massachusetts, Brady recorded organic instruments (violin, bouzouki) before routing them through a compact modular synth setup acting as a sound chamber for further manipulation (loops, effects, textures). In striving to make sense of the ordinary, on Day-blind, Brady’s works are invariably imbued with a sense of serenity and tension as he explains:

»There’s a way in which everyday life can be a source of deep pain and melancholy, intensely disquieting and dull and leaden, and yet it can also be a place of deep peace and conscious attunement to the present moment, and it’s this tension that the album is built around.«

By channelling his own acute musical sensibilities by means of evocative voicings, Brady momentarily deconstructs, warps and reshapes reality, posing questions about perception and our states of being as the album's curious title mysteriously suggests. Across its seven vignettes, »Day-blind« is life animated as Brady makes possible an everyday encounter with the transcendent.