Whereas folk music has been known to wander back and forth between past and present - from the great outdoors to crammed city sidewalks - it finds in Sol Hess' voice a certain boundlessness and timelessness. His new album reveals itself in an ever-shifting beam of light, taking the form of a personal diary that almost unintentionally leads a way to transcendence. A key player of the French underground scene, Sol Hess invariably seems to avoid easy categorization or repetition. He has thus amongst other things been known to front fiery post-punk band Sweat Like An Ape!, conduct noisy post-jazz ensemble Sol Hess & The Boom Boom Doom Revue, or manage his own audacious record label, Club Teckel. And that is without mentioning his collaborations with graphic novelists, illustrators, and the world of live-entertainment and theatre.
After two decades in Bordeaux, the British-born musician has left the city and seems to have made room for inspiration. Waiting For The Cricket Choir is an extremely personal and intimate record, significantly defined by the silence of the countryside he now resides in, the stretching of time to a very state of bliss, and a skinning process that appears to favor the pursuit of an inner truth to the quest for asceticism. Following his solo debut The Missing View, released in 2021, Sol Hess has stripped his craft to classical guitar, vocals and a few phantom arrangements that haunt the tracks of this home-recorded album, and entrusted its subtle mix to long-time collaborator Rubin Steiner. Despite its minimalistic approach, this new collection of songs conveys an impression of freedom and rare honesty. Sol Hess unveils a luxuriant world - interwoven between his words and guitar notes - where one can either hide or abandon one's self altogether, and let the light in for good.
