Release Date: 14 November 2025
Song Count: 13
Rating: 7.8/10
Description:
We're kicking off the brand new, shiny year with a relatively recent collaborative project between a British deep house producer that has been in the industry for a long time in the form of Charles Webster, and a variety of young and old artists from South Africa, banding together to create today's album. A record combining tranquil beats and electronic production with more traditional and culturally defining instruments, voices and other stylistic touches, From The Hill, in its purest form, signifies the interwoven dynamic between these two forms of music that practically flow into each other, even in spite of seeming antithetical to each other in nature from a surface-level perspective, and acts as a celebration of musical variety, evolution and development.
Taking elements from not only Webster's field of expertise in house music, but also downtempo, techno and at times even jazz music in some angles, the album showcases an assortment of rhythms and compositions that, while generally following along on having a lower tempo, calm mood and nigh-minimalistic structure with the amount of sounds and instruments at play at once, manage to shine as individual and unique tracks, all with something different to add to the grander picture of the record's sound palette. The performances of the South African singers in tracks such as "Rain", "Film Me", "The Artist" and "Bakulindele" and the addition of percussion and other musical tools stemming from the country in a lot of other tracks only help to expand on the quality and richness of the sound further, giving it an extra pinch of vitality and unabashed identity that it may have likely missed out on otherwise.
The general laid-back and less energetic nature of the tracks may appear to be a one-way ticket to draining away any actual listener interest over time, however through the usage of sounds that are considered rather uncommon in modern western music as well as the ability to not only allow the songs to take on longer durations without feeling overly repetitive, but also getting them to stand out amongst one another and be memorable, From The Hill manages to keep one's intrigue and maintain its charm and appeal by achieving a lot by doing relatively little, but in turn with expert efficiency and attention to detail. It's an album that may catch one by surprise with how profound and rich it can be, even without going overly bombastic or maximalistic with its sound, just through subtle and graceful interconnection between the traditional and the digital that, in the grand scheme of things, simply seems like natural fit, similar to two matching pieces of a puzzle coming together.
A solid electronic album that I would almost certainly recommend for a nice and "chill" time.