Category:
Rock

Try if you like:
Badly Drawn Boy, Frank Zappa, Jefferson Airplane, Lou Reed, Luna

Dark Star Line is a London/Paris project of one William Dyson. The name of the project is derived from Marcus Garvey's company Black Star Line. Moonlight Sunset is the first album of material from Dark Star Line. The album doesn't start off very good. It's an extended blur of a song that ends up terribly repetitive with no vocals other than what sounds like newscasts in the background. 

But then the charm starts to reveal itself on the very trippy "Road Trip". It has a funky drum beat with some dubby guitar sounding a little like a jam band in overall feel. The vocals are more spoken than sung and dropped so far down in the mix that they are hard to even make out. But then on a track such as "To The End" William gets a really funky beat going and a decent guitar rhythm but fails to grow it to anything substantial. It's a groovy beat but it really lacks substance. What I hear on most tracks is ideas that aren't being quite fulfilled. The basic elements are there but nothing much further than that. Sometimes I even find myself annoyed like on "2042". The vocals are off key and really add no value to the final product. Then the song is cut off quite abruptly. If you are looking for a comparison, I see some lines drawn between Dark Star Line and Luna. They incorporate a dub sort of overtone but have their roots deeply in indie rock. My favorite track is "Hand Me Down" where again, DSL ends up getting a very cool groove going with some watered down lyrics. But sadly, the song is pretty much dropped to a dead stop without properly finishing it off.

My suggestions for future Dark Star Line albums, a cleaner production would help tremendously. Pretty much all of Moonlight Sunset sounds like it was recorded underwater, OK for a little bit but it gets hard to listen to for an entire album. I would either eliminate the vocals or work on bringing them higher up into the mix. Other than that, I think Moonlight Sunset is a good start to a new band.