Being – Byorn Gold (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

It is fair to say that Byorn Gold doesn’t make things easy on himself. As a way of promoting his albums in the past, he has set himself the challenge of playing 250 original songs in 5 years; he also played 250 straight days of Facebook-streamed gigs to spread hope and happiness during the lockdown era. Now, he has again created a series of EPs , which will eventually be brought together to form the album Eastern Time. Being presents the world with the next set of four songs, to continue the story from the earlier EP, Beginning. I do like an artist who likes to challenge themself.

And setting off down the sonic path that a Byorn Gold EP takes you is an eclectic and exciting prospect. His desire to not be defined or tied down by the restrictions of genre, sound, style, or even current fads or fashions, means that you are never really sure of what will be waiting for you once you drop the needle on the record. You just know that the songs will be written in all manner of classic styles and deftly and delicately delivered. And you know that they will be good. So good.

Let It Flow kicks things off, a wave of shuffling beats and urgent energies that opens up into a driving pop-rock number, and as is always the way, no small amount of soul vibes are to be found not just in the saxophone that wanders through the song or the various musical building blocks garnered from that genre, but in Gold’s general musical demeanour. something that is more than the sum of its parts. Soulfulness is something that you naturally have; it can’t be faked. Byorn Gold has more than his fair share of that quality.

As Crack On neatly displays, that soulfulness can be found in the form of a soft and seductive blend of Latin groove and gentle, serene acoustic sonics. Lyrically, this is an excellent example of optimism and self-reflection which are always at the heart of his songs. Crack On plays with the idea that cracks can be places where the light gets in, small spaces that are difficult to navigate and the slang phrase meaning to just get on with the task before you. Here, the overall vibe relates to becoming a better person. Smart.

Serendipity takes those inherent, lilting vibes and mixes them up so that the resulting song is a bustling and breezy experience, ebbing and flowing in a sonic push and pull of on/off sonics. Heavenly harmonies soak through and soften the edges, basslines dance and descend and the saxophone provides a wailing, distant riff.

Finally, Don’t Rush finds him in new territory again, here a darker and slightly more dissonant sound, one where the pace is slow and guitars twang across the foreground, where vocals drift untethered and where more tribal, tablas or toms replace the more confident beats of before. A final moment where he lets the music do the talking, the only words of explanation being those of the title, which is a loving reference to the movie “August Rush” from where the guitar playing technique has drawn musical inspiration.

Byorn’s releases are always intriguing prospects, mainly because you are never sure what you will get. And that is truly exciting, especially in a world of identikit bands and artists merely doing what they have always done. There are many consistencies to be found across his creations, not least the fact that you know how well recorded, performed and delivered the tracks will be. But beyond that, it is a sense of adventurousness and musical exploration that is the common bond between his songs, something that you only really get when an artist understands that genres and expectations, comfort zones and adhering to what has gone before are creative dead ends. And that sense of forward-thinking is always at the heart of Byron Gold’s music, and never more than in the case of this latest release.

The third EP, Becoming, will be available later this year.