My Sanctuary

You mightn’t be familiar with the name Ken McHugh, but chances are you own and love at least one record he has produced, such as Creative Controle’s calling card debut ‘Bloodrush’ or David Kitt’s exquisite modern Irish masterpiece The Big Romance.

After quickly garnering a sterling reputation for recording other people’s work, Ken is now having a go at recording his own. The backbone of My Sanctuary is an electronic soundscape that McHugh and company use to project their pop vision. Especially effective are two tracks featuring vocalist Cathy Davey entitled ‘Let’s Normalise’ and ‘Jellyman’, well crafted slices of sunny electro pop from the Cocteau Twins and Saint Etienne school of songwriting. Carol Keogh of The Tycho Brahe sings on a grand total of five tracks. While some of these drifted by me, ‘Out Of This’ and ‘Postscript’ and the closing salvo ‘Hide and Seek’ border on brilliance.

My most rewarding moments were found in the instrumentals ‘Little Green Men’ and ‘Fragments’. which leads me to think that maybe My Sanctuary buckles slightly under the weight of its own ambition. Nevertheless, it’s a promising if somewhat patchy debut.