Saint-Samuel’s “Sigsaly II/Outro” is like the album that houses it: Big and audacious, and catchy and complex.
He labels his work full-stop “synthwave,” but it’s really more than that: “Synthwave as performed by a one-off partnership of Tangerine Dream and Rush with John Carpenter dropping by for the occasional guest spot.” I imagine that’s too big a tag for SoundCloud, though.
The Carrousel album overall is a fascinating experience, but this song, the album’s climactic moment, stands out.
The song’s synthesizer-driven themes are melodic and full of big emotions, and progress as part of a greater, cohesive story. Instrumental songs can often come off as incidental soundtracks, but Saint-Samuel ensures that this song and the whole album coalesce in such a way as to suggest this really is the official score for some exciting science-fiction film.
Saint-Samuel clearly has the chops to pull off his big ideas: He can compose, he can play, and he can at least imagine a narrative solid enough for us to infer the existence of one. He has also crafted a dynamic song, and an exciting album, that stick with you long after you’ve hit the stop button.
