Eric Hilton (Photo by Neal Ashby)
Montserrat House and Eric Hilton of the legendary duo Thievery Corporation are excited to present “La Nuit,” the second track to be lifted from the Nov. 20 release of his brand new solo album, The Impossible Silence.
The elegant closing song to the album features Elin Melgarejo, a multilingual singer who added her talents to three tracks on the 2014 Thievery Corporation album Saudade and who has performed live with the group.
“I attempted to write the song in French using Google Translate, and she helped greatly, correcting the phrasing and ultimately co-writing the lyrics. Elin’s contribution is incredible,” Eric said.
Stream “La Nuit” by Eric Hilton featuring Elin Melgarejo on YouTube:
Serving as Hilton’s second release of 2020 behind his debut solo offering Infinite Everywhere, The Impossible Silence is a Director’s cut of elegant electronica inspired by vintage film soundtracks of the Sixties and Seventies. Crafted in solitude at his Winter Palace Studio in DC, the album unspools across 13 atmospheric cuts, a soundtrack to a film that exists in the mind of the composer (and anyone who listens). Making this uniquely spacious and subtle music has always been the most challenging for Hilton but has also been the most rewarding, which is one of the many reasons he titled this work The Impossible Silence.
Making a “filmic” record can have its perils; often these efforts can veer towards kitsch or parody. But Eric Hilton’s uncanny ability to musically shape shift, ably honed over 25 years of genre-hopping recordings with Thievery Corporation, serves him well on The Impossible Silence. Like a movie, the record flows through a variety of situational moods, at times melancholic, idyllic, while some tracks are slightly foreboding and others just plain groovy. This was intentional.
“Not being bound by a real movie, or working for a director, I can control the ebb and flow of the mood throughout,” Eric said. “I didn’t want to break the spell, I want the listener to be entranced.”