Nuno Henry Silva - Beautiful Corruption

​Nuno Henry Silva

Beautiful Corruption
self-released; 2016

3.5 out of 5

By Matt Jensen

Nuno Henry Silva is a artist from New Jersey who released Beautiful Corruption. The songwriting is decent on this effort and I liked the style he was going for which is somewhere between ’80s new and alternative music with some other deviations. Beautiful Corruption isn’t held back by the songs as much as it is by the production which is uneven across the album .

There are a couple of issues here that he can easily rectify which would bring his music to the next level. Typically it's not good to drench everything in the mix with reverb. It will just make everything sound like it is coming from a distance especially if you are using a hall reverb with a long decay. On “Mean To Go Insane” Silva drenches everything in reverb making it sound as if you are listening to the whole thing from a couple of rooms away. He also needs to EQ the reverb itself here which is making the song muddy. 

Additionally there is the issue of his low end. The low-end on some of these songs is simply not defined enough. A track like “Finishing Touch” could be a club thumper if it was mixed differently. Instead it sounds like ambient song which a light beat in the background. 

Some of the drier and sparser songs like “Orbit” fare better. The song sounds opens and his songwriting and voice is heartfelt. “Into The Night” is also a decent sparse song but again felt like the use of reverb was way too much.

As the album progresses there are hits and misses. He hits with (no pun intended) “Connect” which focuses on his acoustic and vocals. “Silent Spring” could have been better with a stronger groove that gave it more of backbone. The song felt like a loose jam session for his lead guitar. “Lovemaker” is arguably the best written and produced song on the album and felt like a clear highlight. “Change Your Head” also sounds really good.

I was wondering why this album sounded so uneven in the production department. I was reading in Soundcloud that someone named Luke Meisenbacher mixed and produced the songs that sounded a lot better to my ears. Meisenbacher clearly has a good understanding about production and mixing. If I were Silva I would work solely with Meisenbacher next time around not only because of the aesthetic differences he brings to the mix but the fact that his album would sound cohesive in terms of the palettes of sounds. 

​Overall, Beautiful Corruption has some decent to good songs that is unbalanced because of the varying production. I still enjoyed this EP but think if he implemented a couple of things into his process he could take it to the next level.

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