The End bring the brooding melancholia of a Massive Attack and the technocrat digi dark energy of New Order.

The End

‘California Dreamer’

Out of nowhere comes this fully realised perfect kiss of an album of sophisticated, high end pop noir that lands between the film soundtrack melancholia of a Massive Attack mixed with the technocrat digi dark energy of New Order. It’s like a greatest hits album of a band you have not heard of yet and this is a sneak preview of an album that needs to be released. More details from The End facebook page.   

A street hustler and fixture who knows everyone in a city where everyone seems to know everyone else, the main driving force behind the End, Scully is a face on the Manchester music scene. He is a big and warm presence who creates great art without making a noise about it. It’s the core of the city. That modesty about genius and that innate craft of creating melancholic, elegiac beauty that lurks behind rough exteriors. 

Scully directs many of Noel Gallagher’s solo high end music videos that are artfully intoxicating mini films underlining the songs whilst tripping with the same kind of drama and lush shimmering colours of prime time David Lynch. The videos sneak in an artful art of darkness when no-one is expecting it and add another dimension to the music. 

The End’s music is the same. Without anyone knowing he has also crafted an album with that same kind of artful brilliance.  No one who knows Scully knew he even made music and was expecting this, probably least of all Scully himself. ‘California Dreamer’ is a collection of perfectly crafted songs that are timeless and ambitious. They paint aching, gorgeous vistas of sound and paint pictures in your head. The album’s song cycle is a filmic, ambitious pop noir and an emotional journey into the centre of the city and its iconic ever changing skyline, whilst shimmering in the beautiful rain that cloaks the city of a thousand stories.

The album is a high end soundtrack of crafted electronic slices of perfect pop noir. Huge rollercoaster melodies ebb and flow over shuffling breakbeats like Massive Attack if they lived in the rainy north instead of the sunny south. This is a sophisticated, smart, luxurious music that you can dance to that packs the same kind of pop technocrat touch that New Order specialised in for years. And like that most classic of Manc bands, it has the same kind of Mancunian love for hi-tech and melancholia, and the same love of melody and adventure, as well as the hypnotic, perfectly programmed beats. The fact that David Holmes has remixed a couple of the tracks is a nod to the territory The End are working in, as he adds his love of brooding soundscape to the ambitious music. 

Jessica Greenfield’s powerful and yet tender vocals add an emotional depth to the songs and the sparse melodic backdrops are each mini vignettes and sultry symphonies that are the soundtrack to the soul of the city itself. The album is a magnificent, brooding work that sounds like it was made in the future/now with every song crafted into a fully realised masterpiece; it really is that good.