Irish artist, Sano Hill, is in our ears today at the Send Me Your Ears studio with his latest single, CircleWalk.
We’ve reviewed Sano Hill a couple of times before; ‘The Climb’ and ‘Starting Over’. Both superb tracks, but in CircleWalk, we feel that Sano has really hit the nail on the head.
CircleWalk comes straight in with funky drums and a great catchy bassline. The guitar strums help keep the rhythm going, but the main focus here is definitely the characterful and well played bassline.
Sano’s vocals are clear and present in the mix. Sounding again, like one of our favourite Irish artists, Mike Scott, we feel that Sano’s vocals are even more characterful and passionate than previous releases here. There’s a great breathiness in the vocals at the end of the occasional lyric which gives the impression that he’s truly throwing everything he’s got at this performance. And boy does it show!
CircleWalk is a challenging song about a communication breakdown in a relationship where two people talk in circles rather than saying what they need to say. CircleWalk is about trying to reach out and break the silence and express feelings.
With a great separation between verses and choruses and some lovely 16 beat tambourine in the choruses, this is a song which really grabs your attention.
A long outtro gives the listener the chance to mellow out and really get behind those funky basslines and into the groove. Our only thought here might be that for radio, perhaps shorten the fade out a touch to meet that magic 3.5 minute mark that music directors can be fussy about! This is definitely a track to reach out to local radio and BBC Ireland with. This really has all the makings of a great summer hit.
From a production perspective, a boost centred around 85Hz would bring the thump of the kick out a little more and a boost across the high mids and highs centred around 6kHz for some extra clarity and brightness. There is a little bit of a peak in the vocal track around around 235Hz so a notch out there would balance things out a little more. We liked the way the verses were stripped back but we feel more instrumentation is needed to fill out the sound a little more, particularly something in the low mids and mids. The acoustic guitar here is played very nicely but we feel it would be better used and a nice addition to the backing at this point rather than being the only instrument other than bass and drums. As always, these are our own thoughts for a few changes on a song that is already superb!
CircleWalk is a funky and exciting full band sound. With Sano Hill’s fantastic and characterful vocals, this is once again a song from an artist that is fast becoming one of our favourites!