Helios - Yume [CD]

Yume takes it's title from the Japanese word for dream and delivers an otherworldly ambient-electronic hybrid that's cinematic in scope yet intimate in emotion. In making the album, composer and multi-instrumentalist Keith Kenniff (the sole artist behind Helios) has created a warm sonic tapestry from luminous guitar lines, elegant piano work, ingeniously-crafted rhythms, and lo-fi electronic elements. Though Kenniff's graceful maneuvering of mood and tone lends Yume a journey-like quality, the album offers pieces as captivatingly disparate as Pearls (which blends heavy beats and lilting piano melodies; cascading guitar riffs and airy atmospherics) and Embrace (which closes out the album with a glimmering expanse of sound). Built from both electronic experimentation and live instrumentation, Yume also constructs it's richly-detailed textures by drawing from a repertoire of sound that ranges from toy tambourines to serendipitously-recorded environmental noises. Raised in rural Pennsylvania, Kenniff put out Helios's 2004 debut album Unomia while studying percussion at Boston's Berklee College of Music. Since then, he's released five more albums as Helios, in addition to collaborating with his wife Hollie Kenniff in the shoegaze-inspired pop duo Mint Julep and composing music for such clients as Paramount Pictures, Apple, Facebook, and Google. CD includes two extra tracks.