At once avantgarde in the way that This Heat could be (Daniel O’Sullivan has of course been a member of the revived touring band This Is Not This Heat), The Colour Of Entropy is at the same time confidently accessible in the way that his own earlier solo records and performances have been. Perfectly constructed and elegantly flowing, the single-sided LP finds O’Sullivan compressing his talent for elegiac observation into a record that, while all too brief, pulls off the neat trick of seeming to last much longer.
Dived into three parts as its title indicates, Daniel O’Sullivan takes a mere fourteen minutes to examine and encircle the idea and meaning of colour. Each segment follows on smoothly from the other, together combining into a suite that has O’Sullivan’s melodic piano runs at its heart, his deftly contexualised orchestrations adding counterpoints and sideways meanders to the whole.
While entropy might be referenced, the music itself is full and resonant, seemingly far from crumbling into a heat death at the end of everything. Instead, the swirling imagery that is reflected in Félicia Atkinson’s accompanying spare yet effective artwork and b-side vinyl etchings are cursively redolent of meaning and forms that expand into cosmic psychogeographical flood of elevated moods and passionate texture. It’s a record to fall into wholeheartedly, one to spark little mnemonic flurries of signification that last long beyond the final notes falling into the inevitable nothingess of silence.
