Album Review: Outrun the Sunlight – A Vast Field of Silence (Self Released)

Chicago instrumental progressive band Outrun the Sunlight are back with their stunning fourth full-length A Vast Field of Silence, released 12th November 2021. Four years in the making, the thematic record is a wordless concept album, based around a recurring melody heard throughout.

This year has already produced some beautiful sounding records, some so good that the bar has been set at a seemingly impossible high. Well, no-one told Outrun the Sunlight and the unit have come racing along at the end to unleash their own gorgeous offering.

A Vast Field of Silence is a stunning record. Filled with progressive instrumental highs and lows that aim for the feelings and hit hard. This is an album to lose yourself in, a task that is getting harder and harder to achieve in modern times as we’re all constantly switched on.

Any band capable of capturing the imagination and having you just stop and listen to what they’re doing for any period of time deserve a ton of credit. When a band is capable of doing this over a 10-track album, they deserve to be lauded as one of the greats.

This is what Outrun the Sun do with A Vast Field of Silence. Where the ever-shifting narrative is pinned down by the re-occurring melody but each track showcases varying detailed progressive wonder. Where madness meets genius and never over-steps the mark to sound like self-flagellation.

To call this album an exhaustive journey is to sell it short.

There is no doubt that come the end you’ll be physically and mentally taxed by trying to keep up with Outrun the Sunlight’s array of ideas. It’s a challenge but one that is more than welcome. Most will be sold the moment they hear the opening sensation that is Awareness and utterly in love by time the title track arrives.

Clever, always stimulating, exceptional and attractive, perilous and unforgettable. A Vast Field of Silence is an album everyone should lose themselves too.

Outrun the Sunlight – A Vast Field of Silence Full Track Listing:

1. Awareness
2. Emerald Joy
3. A Way with Honesty
4. Old Wound
5. Dreamless Chaos
6. Luminous Stillness
7. Brindle
8. Zero Dimension
9. Molten Light
10. A Vast Field of Silence

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