Monta

Think of those weird electronic fireplaces that are on the market — the blue flame builds up into a bright orange ball of fire and one instantly feels nice and toasty. Now apply that same logic to The Brilliant Masses, a solo project by Tobias Kuhn. With each song, his insecure tales about love turn your cold, wintry body into a heated little home. As Kuhn brings his listeners closer to the flame, it’s his guitar bends, pulls and strums that flow in and out of the experiments in his mind. With a mixture of recordings that were made both by himself and with long-time friends, this album is a string of quiet stories that stimulate simultaneous climax and doom as each song intensifies with elements such as horns and rolls on the drums that are abruptly discouraged by the cloud of dark organs, drones and emotional lyrics.