Ssiege - Fading Summer

Classy debut album of ephemeral ambient-pop and groggy rhythms from SSIEGE, an Italian producer lending his romantic touch to Andy Lyster’s ace YOUTH label.  SSIEGE explores an endearingly warm and melodic style of electronica to soundtrack transitions from summer to autumn. For anyone who picked up on SSIEGE’s vinyl outings for Rome’s La Beauté Du Négatif, it’s nice to hear him expand those styles into more expressive, weightless zones on the longer format release. Crafted for an end-to-end listen, rather than a collection of DJ cuts, the album flows with an enchanted/enchanting quality from the plucked pointillism of ‘Turbe In Sviluppo (version)’ to the weepy, 1991-esque gauze of ‘Miss You’, taking in the vulnerable peal of ‘A Man’ alongside what sounds like The Cure jangling with Black Zone Myth Chant on ‘Angelo Azzurro’, and some deft yet detached drum machine workouts in the noirish junglism ‘Chromatic’ and the listing ambient breaks of ‘Swan’.’ However the best parts are those ambient bridges that join it all together, as with the puckered introspection of ‘Biscotti 180’, the angelic coos of ‘Regina’, or the seductive iridescence of works such as ‘Boxe’ and ‘Delete Instagram.