Who could imagine that the hottest summer of your life would commence with rain? Who could imagine this long hot summer to continue so refreshingly – with the clatter of water, the clatter of guitar strings? In fact, there is a constant coolness in atmosphere to the whole of Hue’s first solo cd, its ambiance evoking shadows rather than light. Whispering ghosts, alike remembrances of fleeting encounters, of fleeting sights, and especially of fleeting sounds inhabit the keenly sought out shades of churches, village-houses, trees… and probably hotel-rooms as well. These shades themselves become ghostly, ectoplasmatic entities morphing into … - wordless - song (somewhat alike the characters of a Thomas Pynchon movel). Although, within their specific context on the cd, there is a hint of the duck-rabbit problem: with the perspective flitting between background and foreground, between atmosphere and event, the exact specification of which of these poles defines the actual ‘music’ music on the cd at best remains ambiguous. This goes to show that for Hue, a making of a field-recording is itself alike any other form of music. And as such, what he hears too becomes a form of self-disclosure, creating an intimacy as were we a co-traveller on this Odyssee of shades, the move from the one shade to the next as so many stations of shared longing going up to the paradisiacal fata morgana, that utopy of ‘home’ (complementing the stations of the cross which must have been followed so many times considering the importance of the shadowy nature of churches as a source of shelter from the heat). Unable to hold out in the heat of the light, we keep to the confines of shadows – but, as also Hue meets many friends along the way, we at least can sense here that we are not alone. In the end, this cd is a testimony to the invaluable worth of friendship. Home, as they say, is where the heart is.

(Mark Pauwen)