Before a work of art, there is a vision. In the case of the “Blue Sunset” album, it is a shared love of science fiction and horror films and books, anime and kaiju eiga, which energized and inspired the childhood imaginations of musicians Steve Baltes and Lucian Zäyn. Though one grew up near Cologne and the other in Manila, half a world away, both were fascinated by surprisingly similar tropes. It is no surprise that, later in life (with Bladerunner looming large), they share a love of more current cultural phenomena, like Neon Genesis: Evangelion and the Lovecraft Country HBO series. “Blue Sunset” revels and basks in the brilliance of these works which are reinvented, expanded upon and reinterpreted as exuberant exercises of fan fiction
“Blue Sunset”navigates the thin line between transcendence and oblivion, ecstasy and obliteration, Life and the Void, like the superlative works of art which it honors and celebrates. Surreal apocalypses, ecstatic romance, cosmic and existential horror and love stories, both sweet and toxic, pure and impure, alternate kaleidoscopically at a breath-taking pace. The songs about Neon Genesis: Evangelion, the animé, Your Name, Lovecraft Country, The Colour out of Space and the Hammer and Corman horror movies feature all the above. Reading between the lines, “Blue Sunset” affords a fascinating glimpse into a burning hunger for transcendence and life, and the call of the void, both intertwined and contending for supremacy, in battle, set against a simmering backdrop of complex relationships and a rich spectrum of gender and skin color.
“Blue Sunset” is a concept album appreciatively honoring the grand tradition of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, or Genesis’ The Lamb lies down on Broadway, a scintillating panopticon of the Olympian heights and Stygian depths of the humanity and inhumanity of Man – an exploration of human nature; by turns tender, scathing, bitter, savagely satirical, but always straight from the heart.
The following four songs are the heart of “Blue Sunset”: Orithyia Blue Glides along the Diamond Frontier, Wonder Woman, Dee, Christina and her Eternity of Firsts and Ruby, Uninterrupted. “To a caterpillar what is death, but a gorgeous, dancing butterfly…”
The last song, The Lights of Castle Frankenstein, another satirical, tongue- in-cheek piece, closes the album on a humoristic note
“Blue Sunset” – on Mars, the red planet, the sunsets are blue. Yet again, the cosmos manages to subvert expectations. Finding joy in such surprises instead of letting them strike fear in your heart is the definition of living bravely and living well. That is the soul of “Blue Sunset”
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