Album Review: NIYL, Parish is Burning

Parish Is Burning, the debut from Limerick-born artist NIYL (pronounced Nile), is an enchanting alloy of electronic and orchestral sounds, with a 24-carat sonic production in collaboration with Chris Bubenzer of Diffusion Lab, the Irish music label that’s home to Jafaris and Soulé. Takahide George and Marcin Ciszczon, on mixing duties, complete the heavy-hitting posse.

Told in two seasonal movements – Autumn/Winter and Spring/Summer – the 10-track LP serves as a symphonic memoir, trekking from wreckage and despair into light and renewal. Opener ‘Not In Your Life’ is a flurry of multi-tracked vocals and stormy synths, which descends into the brooding and primal ‘The Fire & The Fuel’. ‘Wind’s Call’ is a melodious switchback, before the spectral ‘The Hunt’ channels wolfish packs of small-town judge and jury citizenry in pursuit of our sonic hero.

The spring thaw of ‘Won’t Let My Lover Down’ opens (in old parlance) Side Two with a soul-infused, gospel-doused banger. Next, ‘Chain Of Fools’ marvellously evokes the spirit of the mighty Aretha Franklin in an electronic multiverse. NIYL comes up for air on the tranquil ‘Pretty Epiphany’, before the digital plainchant of ‘Growth’ closes out this epic of a record.

9/10