Best of Budapest & Hungary

After the breakup of black midi, Geordie Greep launched his solo project, resulting in a dazzling debut album. The New Sound is wildly entertaining, like a bizarre musical that at times uplifts, at others slips into fever-dream territory. Greep is a master of atmosphere, and on July 7, we’ll be able to check him live at the Turbina Kulturális Központ.

    “Music can be so much more than just learning to play the same way as everyone else. It can be anything you want. When recording The New Sound, it was the first time I didn’t have to meet anyone’s expectations. In a band (black midi), there’s often this feeling that ‘we can do anything,’ but that mindset can also be limiting- and sometimes it’s good to do something different, to let things go.”

    Greep’s first solo album offers a level of richly layered, all-encompassing alternative pop entertainment we haven’t heard in a long time. With confident elegance, it balances on the edge between the ridiculous and the brilliant.

    The story behind the album’s creation is fascinating in itself. More than thirty session musicians contributed across two continents. As Greep recalls: “Half the songs were recorded in Brazil with local musicians we brought together at the last minute. They hadn’t heard anything from me before, my demos alone sparked their interest. The recordings were completed in a day, maybe two at most.”

    The spirit of Greep’s increasingly feverish and enigmatic monologues evokes the worlds of Frank Zappa and Frank Sinatra, generously infused with the influence of Scott Walker.

    The title track, an instrumental piece, swirls with jazz-funk energy and could easily stand as the score to a TV series or the overture to a Broadway musical. Songs often shift from whispers to shouts, bursting into life and ending just as explosively.

    The narratives themselves function like a “shopping list of the active male imagination.” A sequence of short scenes unfolds, with Greep acting as both master of ceremonies and conductor. The characters who appear are caught up in wild fantasies and situations in which they inevitably fail. “The central theme of the album is desperation: someone convincing themselves they’re in control when, in fact, they’re not.” Greep gives space to visions ranging from cannibalism and being boiled alive to a woman giving birth to a goat.

    Street life permeates The New Sound: listeners are dropped into a world filled with cafés, bars, rented rooms, cabarets, and strange museums. Here, we witness our protagonists engaging in mischief, military roleplay, or socio-economic “success stories.” The boundary between parody and sermon often blurs. In the single “Holy Holy,” refined romantic fantasy tells the story of an imagined nightclub affair, blending 2000s indie chords with virtuosic Latin big band arrangements.

    The entire album feels like a vibrant vortex: an oneiric adventure drawing equally from everyday life and the intricate world of imagination. All of this will come to life on stage at Geordie Greep’s concert on July 7 at Turbina.