AmbientMusicGuide.com - Slow Dancing Society

Slow Dancing Society is the one-man show of Washington-based composer Drew Sullivan. His sublime debut album The Sound Of Lights When Dim uses various combinations of piano, stately organ, synthetic tones, percussive clicks and especially electric guitar. It's very gentle, melodic and unabashedly romantic. The unusual intimacy of Sullivan's compositions is reflected in the wonderful titles: "How Life Was Meant To Be Lived", "A Lonesome Sentiment" and so on. The repetitive minimalism of "A Song That Will Help You Remember To Forget" overlays multiple guitar motifs on a subtle bed of keys with such tenderness it may well bring a tear to your eye. It's sensual and mesmerising stuff, thoroughly addictive and, yes, best played when the lights are rather less than bright.

Sullivan's lovely third album Priest Lake circa '88 also revels in romanticism, this time focussed on a place rather than on people. It's much more landscaped and impressionistic, lacking the rhythmic pulses and clicks that often propels the music of his debut. However unlike its disappointing companion album A Slow And Steady Winter (2007), Priest Lake remains tonal, warm and free of unnecessarily abrasive distortion. Sullivan clearly loves the swirling, vibrating sounds of a Hammond organ played through a Leslie speaker cabinet; it's this sound in combo with reverberating electric guitar that defines the album.

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