The Displaced is the debut album from Sam King, who is a graduate from Edinburgh Napier Music and is a dammed fine multi-instrumentalist to boot!.
Sam kindly sent me a copy of the album to check out telling me is it is It’s an exciting and fresh progressive album that explores a variety of sounds and styles.
And It also features guest contributions from Adam Holzman, Randy McStine and Derek Sherinian. Not bad eh?
The flyer in the CD case mentioned it defying genre norms drawing on a panorama of influences from Nine Inch Nails to Kate Bush to Joni Mitchell to the Delgados.
Sam takes care of everything – vocals, drums, guitar, bass, keys and even a spot of violin and trombone. Then the aforementioned guests pop up here and there.
Before I spun it for the first time I wondered if it would square up to those words – and let me tell you it does.
With The Displaced, Sam does indeed have that exciting and fresh progressive sound. There’s so much going on musically throughout it is the type of album which reveals a bit more with each listen.
We have the lot – crushingly heavy riffs, all sorts of keyboards making all sorts of noises, strong bass, big drumming, acoustic bits, ambient bits and well, you name it and it’s here somewhere.
You may be thinking with so much going on things may sound disjointed and not flowing well. Not so – well, perhaps at first until the first two or three listens as the album reveals itself as like all good prog it takes that bit of time to digest properly.
Neu Trik begins with weird bleeps before a huge riff steams in then continue with a style I’d describe as “fractured” with stark drums, keyboard squeaks and a wonderfully fluid solo from Sherinian. A fine start.
Wreckage is another powerful one with plenty of changes in pace, variety and power and a marvellous Moog solo from Holzman.
Hiding in Plan Sight is almost an acoustic ballad before it gets properly progged up. Then the title track brings back the stark, edgy feel. Here’s the video:
Scintilla Absent broods along starkly before the big finish then the eleven minutes of Convergence closes the album out in some style featuring so many things. A gentle start merges in to a bass and drum section which then comes the big heavy mid section before some ambience and a moody lead-out and in amongst all the twisting a turning as a fine guitar solo from McStine.
Sam has composed a very fine debut album here. It’s all sorts of things and never less than interesting and engaging. Stark, heavy, progressive, bleak, ambient, acoustic are some adjectives in an attempt to cover it.
The album is available from Sam’s BandCamp page. Do check it out and listen to some there.
https://samking.bandcamp.com/album/the-displaced