SATX Music — Album Review: Something Fiction

Album Review: Something Fiction - “Botany”

By Libby Day, SATX Music

“Best enjoyed with meditation or medication.” –MATT HUMBLE

Something Fiction’s debut album, “Botany,” is gradual and amorphous – a collection of songs meant to be felt, heard and experienced as a whole. Leave your desire to label and classify at the door (or by the nearest tree) because these sounds are quite experimental. Something Fiction draws on many different musical histories and combines them to create a new, yet comfortable experience.

To give “Botany” the chance it deserves, I recommend listening while lying on your couch, in your yard, or in any other place with an earthy feel. You probably won’t like it for bumpin’ in rush hour on your way to work, for example. But who knows? Maybe this kind of music is exactly what you need for the rush hours in your life!

Active but chill, “Botany” is like a hybrid of music from The Lion King soundtrack and British electronic musician/composer Aphex Twin. If there were a category of music that causes bursts of happiness, this record would certainly qualify.

The engaging “Japanese Sunrise” and “Morphic Fields” warm my insides, while “The Sky” is ominous and brooding. During “Searching For Enlightenment,” it’s easy to forget where the music is even coming from. Overall, the album creates a feeling that you could hug the sun, and that the sun really needs that hug. Favorite track: “Sunshine On My Shoulders.”

Bongos, synths, hypnotic vocals… oh my! It’s a mind game, trying to identify all the instruments responsible for this aural medley. One has to appreciate the organic ability of the group’s guiding light, Matt Humble, to compose and create this kind of eerily natural listener experience with the instrumentation by guitarist Raul Rodriguez and drummer Nick Greder.

Something Fiction’s experimental, postmodern musings are an uncanny kind of creative talent for San Antonio (and beyond) to digest and hopefully, to enjoy.

See them in action at SATX Music’s 2nd-Annual Summer Showcase, August 10th at The Ten Eleven (1011 Avenue B) with The Way The World Ends, LaJit and Bite Lip Bleed.