“Nonchalant,” the first track off Sans Soleil — the New Haven-based Ceschi’s latest album and the second in a trilogy he’s releasing this year — starts with an ominous drone that suggests we’re not prepared. Ceschi drops in with a casual “what up?” that seems almost a little out of place, until it’s followed bu a rest-in-peace shoutout to a friend. The beat drops, big and heavy, and Ceschi is off, flinging out lyrical ideas like he still has a thousand more to spare and backing it up with a voice shot through with raw emotion.
“Make your own religion / I’m a homing pigeon pecking at the city square / Stop giving me shitty stares,” he raps, and dives in again.
Ceschi — a.k.a. Julio Ramos — has said that the three albums he’s releasing this year are the final statement for the musical project known as Ceschi. Sad, Fat Luck, released in April, was a sharp cry from the heart, zeroing in on Ceschi’s grief at losing friends to drugs, accidents and suicide. It was a tight, definitive statement, featuring some of the most honest and direct writing of his career, and accompanied by a packed release party at the State House and a tour. If Ramos had said that Sad, Fat Luck was his final album as Ceschi, it would have made sense. As mic drops go, it’s a good one.
But Ramos apparently has something a little more complicated in mind. Sans Soleil, the accompanying liner notes explain, “completely ignores cohesiveness. It is a fragmented collage; a raucous yet grief-stricken, genre-ignoring, dirty kiss of a musical eulogy to dead friends, youth, musical scenes & long lost inspirations.” The album is “driven by the type of experimentation that defined Ceschi’s earliest work 15 years earlier. No song on the album sounds quite like any other. From grimy lo-fi hip hop to heart-wrenching folk to prog-reggaeton Spanish rap to spoken word poetry to cinematic pop there are no rules here other than the urgent need to write from a perspective of painfully blunt honesty.”
This is about as apt a description of the album as one could want. “Frank False’s Eulogy” could have been a cut on Sad, Fat Luck, but for its rolling, thunderous drums — and then it ends with a duet between Ceschi and a solo trumpet, evocative of both “Taps” and a call to arms. “Old Graves” finds Ceschi in folk mode. “1988” is a piece of pop heaven, complete with soothing synths and a melody sung in cooing falsetto. “Ceschirito” has Ramos rapping at delicious speed in Spanish (note to Ceschi: please rap more in Spanish).
“Yoni’s Electrocardiograms,” meanwhile, is a remix of “Electrocardiographs” from Sat, Fat Luck, with reworked lyrics and a completely different musical soundscape that turns what was an excoriating track on the previous album into something a little more searching and even whimsical. “Animal Instinct” burns it up as Ceschi trades lines with a cast of friends including brother David Ramos. “Red Emma” partakes of the vibe of a rock anthem. And the lush, ethereal “Capsize,” which closes the album, might be the prettiest thing Ceschi has recorded.
In the context of being part of a final artistic statement, Sans Soleil can feel a bit like Ceschi is cleaning house. But the sonic range of the album, and the vitality behind it, suggests that while Julio Ramos may be ready to end the specific name, he’s not remotely done making music. He’s closing one big door and opening a thousand tiny windows. The question of what happens next is wide open.
And there’s still one more album this year to go.
Sans Soleil is available on Bandcamp and through Ceschi’s website devoted to the trilogy.