Acting as the sole producer, instrumentalist, mixer and writer on his music, Happy Animal presents Autumn Shade with unapologetic fervour.
There’s an undeniable roughness to Autumn Shade, written and recorded during the 2020 Covid lockdown, there was the obvious lack of professional recording spaces for a lot of artists. Some chose to turn their bedrooms and garages into makeshift studios, with varying degrees of effectiveness.
Whilst some artists tried and succeeded in making more minimal music with extra bits of mixing to clean up the sound. Other artists like Happy Animal embraced the lo-fi aspect and just let nature take its course.
The sounds of Autumn Shade are about as lo-fi as you can get, with clear reverb from the garage walls present in each instrumental part. It’s a mess of guitar, drums sounding like the crashing of bins, and vocals that echo all about with little consistency. But Happy Animal owns it nonetheless.
Autumn Shade could be described as about as raw as garage music can get. It’s full of blemishes and imperfections that would be ironed out in any studio led project. But by ignoring the standards set by most bands, Happy Animal brings in the spirit of punk music, taking instruments, recording whatever the hell you want, and releasing it. It’s the idea that you shove the norms and typical conventions out the window and don’t spare a second thought for anyone else, as long as you’re happy with it.
It’s undeniable that Autumn Shade is a rough song that will put a lot of people off with just how ramshackle it is. But it also expresses the idea of garage and punk in its delivery and sits on the fringes of when music becomes noise. The name Happy Animal is undoubtably appropriate too, he’s happy with the music, but records like an animal locked in a room with some instruments, and there’s merit to be found in that itself.