04 Feb 2011 — Henning Lahmann
Golden Birthday has been present in Chicago's synth underground scene for quite a while now, yet since their 2008 debut
Infinite Leagues, it has been rather quiet around the illustrious project that has included half of the Windy City's musical avant-garde in the past, with members such as Adam Griffin of
Night Gallery and Beau Wanzer of Streetwalker (who we had on these pages
earlier this week), among musicians of Cave, Mahjongg, and Lazer Crystal, all gathered around creative mastermind Ryan Sullivan.
This year Sullivan will finally be back with two new releases, an EP named
Illusions on Florida's
Aural Pleasures soon, and later in 2011 with Golden Birthday's sophomore full-length
Blue Island on Chicago's own
Rainbow Body Records, the label that had blessed us with Night Gallery's terrific
Constant Struggle LP last year.
While the upcoming
Illusions will again contain some full-band collaborative efforts, the EP track below is one of the pieces that Sullivan has done all by himself, but there's clearly nothing missing in
Missing Person, an upbeat yet strangely slow-burning wave monster made up of thick layers of washed-out synths and a driving drumbeat that just keeps going on and on over the course of almost eight minutes, an amazing track all along that is less about blowing you away and more about creating a certain kind of atmosphere than the works of his prominent contemporaries like
Gatekeeper, and that will surely secure Sullivan's unique status in Chicago's rapidly emerging synth wave scene.
Golden Birthday - Missing Person
