![oct19_06_[tourist].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a85f41eccc5c5e40df9daf7/1579915800211-D8S7ZWSRKJN7432C7TU5/oct19_06_%5Btourist%5D.jpg)
October 18, 2019 - Monday Records
William Phillips’s music has played a part of my life for seven years, from his debut self-titled EP in 2012 and winning the Song of the Year Grammy with Sam Smith in 2015, to ‘We Stayed Up All Night’ being the first dance at one of my best friend’s wedding. Phillips’s work had been rather on the slow side of the release stream until this year; his February album Everyday gave way to a series of singles culminating in Wild, one of the richest projects to emerge this year. One of the most emotionally poignant projects to emerge this year. One of the most needed projects to emerge this year.
Phillips sculpts sound. ‘And So, You Were!’ is folded into existence, stretched and compressed like Smoky Mountain taffy logs. It pulls from emotion but doesn’t push into being. The natural progression into ‘Elixir’ feels smooth; you don’t realize the amount of tension that has been built until the beat cracks into place half a minute in. And the world is right. The feeling is still there but it has a place, a home.
‘Bunny’ provides a clear break from the introduction of the project. Digitally compressed fairy harps build upon a central melodic breath underneath a crisp percussive loop, like twigs snapping beneath thick-socked feet. ‘So’ ventures further along this path, dusk descending on a brief collection of field-recorded slice-of-life samples. Like much of the Tourist library, the result is deeply personal; it almost feels intrusive. The latter half of the track opens up to cliff-sized synth chords that bring up the intensity and speed of the album thus far.
‘Fiction’ acts to calm that which was just made more intense, two minutes and change of layered blanket sounds and textures gently floating down on top of a non-newtonian lake. The progression into ‘Still Life’ is almost distracting, more like changing the filter of light on the sound than a clear move forward, and the track that spreads itself open is the least introspective of the lot; that might just be the slow fade-out speaking, but it’s hard to tell. Blippy pluck tones plant themselves on the forefront on a track that almost, almost, tries to exist in both the home-listening and festival-closer realms.
The eponymous ‘Wild’ succeeds in the previous track’s near-attempt, existing in all realms, club, home, festival, mind, body, memory. It is a Tourist track and it was meant to be, feeling like a long lost track you thought you’d never hear again but so thankful to have found. ‘11.12’ cuts straight back to personal; an intimate soundscape clearly crafted around a moment, or series of moments we as listeners will never fully grasp but have been given the all-clear to inhabit ourselves.
‘Kin’ picks up with intensity again, pushing the emotional depth with further fervor, partially due to the desire to revisit the project once again from the top. An environment has been crafted to allow memories to exist easily between the layers of reverbed vocals, dripping synths, and pulsing low frequencies. And then, as if emerging from a deep forest pool, we are enveloped by ‘Together At The Centre Of Creation.’ A crisp and hopeful piece that brings Wild around full circle.
Back to the beginning. Back to the source. Back to what was intended. Back to what is needed. 🍍