Jud Vandy - Children Lost In Fantasy Part 1


The artwork for Jud Vandys 'Children Lost In Fantasy Part 1' is bright yet bleak and abstract which portrays the contents of the album perfectly. Opening track 'Edison Fair' is a rousing and aggressive start driven by marching drums, distortion seething in and out while the guitars make a devilish impact on the track with the use of alternative tunings and tones often making it sound much akin to an emergency alarm. Melody is supplied in the form of Vandys original vocals and synth use giving the song its personality. 'Small Town Claustrophobia' opens sounding like Pelican or Isis with its dirty distorted riff surprising you after the melodic 'Silhouette of An Ending'. It keeps you on your toes by cutting between this memorable riff and a beautiful guitar melody as Vandys floating vocals provide the glue that stick the piece together. 'Liquid Night' is eclectic, emotional and mysterious, driven by its quirky slide bassline it becomes more memorable as Mella Cottons haunting vocals bring chills to the your spine in the chorus offering something different in tone than Vandys has previously on the song. 'Please Please (Winter Song)', the stand-out track for me, starts beautifully with guitar harmonics before it explodes driven by a stuttering drum beat behind melodically dirty guitars as Vandy begs "Please please...". What really makes this song stand out for me however, is the mid section of the track, where everything drops away into a beautiful quiet moment only for you to be surprised by the huge evil metal sounding guitar riff which on the whole is something that I would expect a band like Deftones to come up with.

'Children Lost In Fantasy Part 1' is an adventurous piece of art that continuously keeps you on your toes, touching on several genres including post-rock, metal and even folk. Its attractiveness lies on how eclectic it is, happy to flirt with both beautiful and dark melodies and even more happy to move from slow to upbeat tempos which works incredibly well from the downbeat and quiet 'Hey You' to the dirty and angry guitar riffs on 'Please Please (Winter Song)'. Considering Jud Vandy is an unsigned artist and recorded everything on a home computer, you have to at least hope that he can gain some form of career in the music industry from this because everything from the CD digipack to the musicianship and production on the album is really something to write home about and people should definitely be opening their ears to this album.

4 / 5