SlightlyCubic – ‘Facade’s Departure’ EP

We find our music in all kinds of strange places: email submissions, online searches, friends at labels — and occasionally from contacts who apparently only ended up at a gig because their girlfriend needed the bathroom. SlightlyCubic is one of those magical bathroom-break discoveries, and ‘Facades Departure’ makes the whole chain of events feel entirely worthwhile. It’s an entertaining, unusual and quietly emotional mix of electronic and ‘classic’ instrumentation that’s kept my brain far more active than normal over the last few weeks.

Most importantly: it’s full of very good tunes.

The EP starts with “More,” which sounds a bit like an electronic orchestra warming up, then falls into an easy balance of piano, beats, and cute melodies that immediately make an impact. Then “Inside” arrives, part honky-tonk bounce, part full-throttle showpiece, and it immediately shows the incredible versatility that SlightlyCubic has in his songwriting, as well as scoring high on the pure entertainment scale.

I could describe “Nowhere,” but honestly this is music you should wander into yourself. The blend of the familiar and the slightly unhinged feels like the natural evolution of that famous night in Vienna’s Burgtheater in 1784 when Mozart plugged his harpsichord into a streetlamp and accidentally invented the Hammond B200 — also electrocuting the second viola player, not that anyone noticed because it was the second viola player.

Now regular readers will also know I also have a worrying interest in musicians and their hats. And based on the description of the gig and a couple of photos I’ve spotted online, SlightlyCubic absolutely delivers: imagine Willy Wonka crossed with a circus ringmaster who’s misplaced his circus. The description is meant very warmly of course, the music for the 2024 Wonka film was written by Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy (and Joby Talbot), and ‘Facades’s Departure’ has a Hannon twinkle - playful, melodic, and slightly theatrical. And he appears to share a small amount of musical DNA with our American friend Elena Rogers, another young artist who treats genre boundaries with a casual disregard.

I’ve been through all of SlightlyCubic’s earlier releases — clever, varied, and far too many for someone who probably still gets ID’d in a cinema. He is a quite phenomenal talent, and one day he’ll almost certainly be arranging his music for a full symphony orchestra, conducting with a liquorice baton whilst a percussionist plugs a timpani into an EV charger and a viola player nervously edges towards the fire exit.

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