OK, let me warn you it’s long, indulgent and painstaking in its thoroughness and dedication: and not everything will be for you. But the good bits are very good indeed.
OK, let me warn you it’s long, indulgent and painstaking in its thoroughness and dedication: and not everything will be for you. But the good bits are very good indeed.
Now this is some trip: at times the record is very like a Peter Hammill release, especially in his VDGG days. Pawn Hearts sprang to mind now and again when I listened to the opener Heliopause Part 1, which sets off at 3 mph and doesn’t seem to want to get any faster, but that’s okay. But there again, neither does the following nine minute slobber of Heliopause Part 2. It rumbles around for its allotted time, with only wailing guitar and an incidental rhythm section for company. It’s extremely slothful stuff that is always in danger of disappearing into some wormhole over other. There are plenty of blissed out moments, Another Place is a sluggish (though charming) work out and the hippy interludes of (By The Light of The Moon) and (Passive Waves) draw deep on a hippy wellspring.
Sometimes the all-pervading ambience gets into post-rock territory as with Midnight Square. Best track on here in the blissed out stakes is Memory Fade to Silver, which is a mighty work, looking to change in tempo and texture as much as possible, and somehow morphing into a metallic and spooky Fassbinder soundtrack before kicking off at the end.
It’s not all heavy or excessively stoner: Face The Eschaton by contrast is a light breezy number with a great deal of charm and a lightness of touch that belies its single minded groove. Indeed the band is good at creating meditational or trance tracks with a minimum of fuss (check out the mantra of Methods of Control) and in some ways, when things kick up a gear, Heliopause is a bit like Glide (the guitar bits on Momentum sound like Sergeant at times) or Skyray. There’s even a touch of New Order (circa PCL) in the guitar licks in Penultimate Dream Sequence and something very dark in Single Point of Failure.
OK, let me warn you it’s long, indulgent and painstaking in its thoroughness and dedication: and not everything will be for you. But the good bits are very good indeed.