KAINA – 'Next To The Sun' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. House

2. Ghost

3. Next To The Sun

4. What's A Girl

5. Waiting On A Day

6. Joei

7. Could Be A Curse

8. So Small So Vast

9. Green

The opening track takes a while to get going, I was wondering what I was about to listen to, then, out of nowhere KAINA starts singing and life gets much better. She has a very expressive and interesting voice, I’m not sure the music worked on the first track, 'House', but the voice instantly drew me in.

The second song, 'Ghost', is haunting, which I’m sure is deliberate. Again, the voice draws you in and again I’m not convinced the music lives up to the bar her voice sets. It is an improvement on the start though and left me intrigued enough to keep listening.

'Next To The Sun' starts and it becomes obvious KAINA is not trying to conform, she is going her own way, her voice is an excellent instrument the music supporting it is much more challenging. On my first listen I didn’t really get it, but repeated listens let me realise she may be on here way to reinvigorating Electronic music without her ever quite getting there. The one thing she always does is challenge your expectations, when I first heard her voice I was expecting the album to morph into something more soulful, that it didn’t is to her credit, that would have been the easy route.

From this point I wanted to keep listening to see how far she was willing to take this. Imagine my surprise then when the next song sounded almost mainstream but in a leftfield way. I think KAINA might just be a major talent who needs someone to work with her to reach the heights she might be capable of.

My concern is that there is not a lot of variation in the musical vision, a pattern develops and while the soundscape changes throughout it never varies hugely from the basic approach.

I think there is great potential here and a lot of good and interesting things happening, it just needs something to kick it up to the top level.

There is a voice that needs to be heard and a lot of ambition, I think, with the right challenge being given during the recording process, KAINA is easily capable of creating a six out of five album, as it is, it never quite reaches the heights I hoped for after the first few tracks, so it’s a four out of five album for me. I will be interested to see where she goes next as I think it could be somewhere excellent!