Our musical present seems to be a continuous re-digestion of the sweetmeats from the past. And, as with anything, some days it’s great and on others it can lead to a whole lot of bellyache.
Our musical present seems to be a continuous re-digestion of the sweetmeats from the past. And, as with anything, some days it’s great and on others it can lead to a whole lot of bellyache.
(Fire) http://www.konkurrent.nl
What a fabulously dreamy record this is. Nostalgickes and psychedelic fairies should snap this up in droves, as the lilting mix of Ege Bamyasi-era Can, Wicker Man-isms and Lee ‘n Nancy-style bedtime stories never ceases to delight. There are some fabulous pop tunes here too; California Owls could be Sunday Morning, until it seems to dissolve into a prism of tinkly sounds. Whereas Follow the Light and Arcana are pleasingly syrupy mixes of Lee Hazlewood and Velvet Underground. It’s as if someone got hold of the Morvern Callar soundtrack and thought, “let’s ram this trippe up to 11, like we’re the easy listening version of Nigel Tufnell”. Yikes.
People who like the stuff I’ve just mentioned (the groovers who buy Library records and stuff recorded by pagans in woods and released in tape runs of 50) will also swoon over the record’s psyched-out, future-past cinema soundscapes; check out the Hoch-Europa wibbles and dream bubbles projected by Something Unknown You Need to Know, or The Optic Nerve. (As well as the whole cartload of Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and old Broadcast offcuts dumped on your doorstep, the tracks have got something of “the Barry Adamsons” about it too; something that relates to Oedipus Schmoedipus‘s frazzled portentousness.
Our musical present seems to be a continuous re-digestion of the sweetmeats from the past. And, as with anything, some days it’s great and on others it can lead to a whole lot of bellyache. This offering, luckily, despite it sounding like me having a nostalgic day running through my old vinyl, is also like a nice glass of something with ice, at a naughty hour of the clock. Worth investigating.