Super review by Cal Gibson, of The Secret Soul Society.

We all come from somewhere, dragging our thoughts and memories with us, our stories and our catastrophes, the people we enjoy being around, and the ones that bring the past into focus. Personal System‘s Distant Paradise is the melancholic sound of life laid bare, etherised, an afternoon spent in front of the television devouring rotten dramas.

It’s unhurried, slowed down scenes from movies barely remembered, shops shutting early and muted goodbyes. In The Lights Of A Sunset sets a saxophone a-wandering, looping around like empty beer bottles, desperate to stay young and never feel old. Heartbreak meets disillusion downtown, illuminating past lives and loves, and coming up with very little to hang on to.

When The Night Falls is melodramatic, arching its eyebrows your way: pillowy bass and DX 7 pads softly chiming. Secret loves forged in schooldays: refusing to understand that life always moves on, the sax again employed to soften the blow, that love is the drug as ever, love and death the eternal partnership.

Crystal Palms is intuitive and gentle, a softly rocked glide through what might have been. Last night’s rain reconfigured as today’s medication, a starting point for endless rumination on a fairy tale once upon a time. Trains setting off for sorrowful destinations, weeping at the station. Personal System keeps everything short, concise, a rendering of familiar themes given a shine courtesy of some keen musical intelligence.

Distant Memories (what else?) rounds off a beautifully judged collection with another three and a half minutes of tarnished dreams and the hopes and thoughts of someone who refuses to treat life like a game. There is depth here, there is walking in the park at dusk, empty beaches shorn of smiles and suntans. It totters close to pastiche at times, maybe, but Distant Paradise is heartfelt and careful, an expression of washed-out mental space that reverberates gently deep into the night.

Dream Chimney continues to gleefully fill the world with confident, unpredictable musical offerings: I strongly suspect this album will be spreading its soulful pathos far and wide amongst the cognoscenti. You can’t stay sixteen forever, but you  can take solace in Personal System’s fine musical architecture. A small delight.

Personal System’s Distant Paradise can be ordered directly from Dream Chimney.