Album Review/ Ambient : Hilgrove Kenrick’s ‘Sylph’

Hilgrove Kenrick is an award winning composer, pianist, and singer. The artist curates atmospheres, worlds, and ethos for TV, Film and Games. Loaded with visuals, intricate sensibilities, and nuanced evocations, his soundscapes have the ability to transform anything into anything. His latest release is ‘Sylph’ in collaboration with Nick Norton-Smith. It is a four-track EP that is vivid and vast, an expanse that you can journey through. If you’re looking for a collection that speculates on a dramatic ambience, you’re in the right place. It has moments of neoclassicals, ethereal synths, a folksy serenity, and a landscape that goes on for days. You can become as abstract as you want to. It is perfect for your artistic, meditative, and expressive endeavors. 

The collection opens with ‘Sylph’. Its intro has a cinematic sweep, inflating instrumentals, rising and growing into the soundscape. Leaving behind a soft trail of its resonance that elongates the scene and builds the landscape in retrospect. Violins, piano melodies, and synths align in their texture, feel and flow. A saxophone solo plays with pride, pleasingly piercing, and contemplative in a dreamy and hopeful way. That feeling of standing on top of the world, that’s the feeling as you flow with it and lift into it. 

‘Nymph’ is next. This song also presents an expanse. However, it differs in its base tones, in the frequency of its flow and its soft sonic chemistry. It’s lighter, remarkably more mellow, and dare I say dainty. It feels more fragile and graceful. It has an undulating feel, as if carried by a light breeze or a natural ocean current. Buoyant and swaying. A thin ribbon of sax details it, weightless and so freshly evocative. It’s experiencing, feeling, and expressing all at the same time. 

We continue this odyssey with ‘Salamander’. The song carries warmer base notes. The sax has a serene duality to it. You can get carried away with its main line or simmer and slow down with its secondary line of expression. There’s both flight and grounding, and simultaneously tapping into balances the mind in an extraordinary way. 

By the time you get to ‘Undine’, you’re already paused. The spaces around you have all been influenced by the music and its persevering effect. With this last track, you move towards a deeper level, the finality. There are a lot of tall melodies and melodic growth. The sax becomes a vehicle to explore the shimmering soundscape in. As it moves, you journey through a glinting, glistening, shining world. There are luminous assemblies of synths, faint celebratory beats, and a dramatic arch with a beautiful faraway land on the other side of it. Listen Now!

The EP is available for streaming on popular sites like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music! 

You can listen to ‘Sylph’ by Hilgrove Kenrick & Nick Norton-Smith here -