Solitude

Where the overdriven dancehall of Kevin Martin’s The Bug is violent and explosive, his King Midas Sound project is more like smoke wafting over the wreckage, thanks to the ethereal vocals of the English-Trinidadian poet Roger Robinson. Over time, their music has become wispier and wispier, and *Solitude* is their most immaterial offering yet—a hazy array of disorienting synth drones overlaid with halting spoken-word meditations on loss and loneliness. Over the course of this intensely private, almost claustrophobic album, Robinson surveys the scorched earth of a failed relationship, intoning his innermost thoughts in a low baritone: reminiscing on his love, ruing their breakup, and jealously following his ex-lover’s every move. The effect is like eavesdropping on the musings of a not-entirely-sympathetic narrator, being pulled into his world almost against our will. It’s a harrowing album, and Martin’s cryogenic dub pulses and nearly beatless streaks of metallic sound offer cold comfort: The long, dark night of the soul was rarely as chilling as this.

Now a duo, Kevin Martin and Roger Robinson strip away all the excess and most of the reggae, yielding a desolate snapshot of heartbreak framed in stark, largely beatless drones.

The Bug and Roger Robinson take us on a brilliant, awful trip on their latest LP

The two members of King Midas Sound, poet Roger Robinson and producer Kevin Martin, are happily married men.