Sunkissed by Guitar is probably the most out there thing that I can find that also doesn’t sound like it was intentionally made to be different. It was released all the way back in September of 2002 as Guitar’s (also known as Michael Lückner and Digital Jockey) first album, it was made on CD and Vinyl by a couple of different publishers but the one I’ve seen the most is Morr Music. This is an odd case where I can’t find much about this guy, there’s no Wikipedia and this is the only album onSpotify despite him having many more albums.
It’s really hard to read, but I think that this is one guy making most of this while vocals are passed on to other individuals to do. Michael Lückner is obviously the mastermind behind all of this with his credits going as songwriter, producer, mixing, guitar, instrumentation, programming. On the vocals side Ayako Akashiba and Regina Janssen are who did those songs. Between these two parts there is a pretty obvious symbiotic relationship going on as one track doesn’t have vocals and seems to be the worst, and the least streamed. What is created when these two combine is very incredible.
There are a total of eight tracks on the album and like two are remixes. The first half of the album sounds extremely good but the second half doesn’t really work very well to me. “Sunkissed” and “House Full of Time” were both the best tracks while “See Sea, Bee And Me” and “Feel Flows Free” are close behind. I saw someone use the word dense to describe these songs and I feel that it is the best descriptor I could give. The rest don’t seem to tickle the same fancy that the first half did, I just want to highlight that “Hot Sun Trail” lacks vocals and it doesn’t work without it. I don’t really think the stinkers of the album really weigh it down as what is there is awesome.
The album combines trip-hop and shoegaze together to create what it did, which I’ve only really heard of the latter’s music. I’d give Sunkissed by Guitar a 4.2/5 multicolored stars because it is able to be different and good. I don’t really know what to connect this band to but when reading other’s opinions a lot of them said this is a form of My Bloody Valentine worship which I guess I get. Overall, don’t listen to the second half and it will be good.
