Description
Label Review.
2004 album. Also available on CD.
Our Overview.
Arriving ten years after the band disbanded, the long-awaited and criminally overlooked follow up brings with it an evolution of their sound. Their experimentations are layered with blissed out electronics, shoegaze, post-rock and jazz are still at its fore as are Sutton’s crystalline vocals. Languid and brooding, the soundscapes are dark and sustained while their “trademark cocoon of limpid, rippling guitar figures and jazzy adornment is buffeted by sharp leftward turns” (Uncut).
Recorded in Graham Sutton’s East London DustSuckerSound studio between 1999 and 2004, it features contributions from Talk Talk sticksman Lee Harris and ‘found drumming’ from ex-band member Mark Simnett. “This album is percussion-centric, and that’s to say nothing of the temperance and agility of the drummers’ playing. It’s also an album smitten with texture, space, and silence, a seamless blend of acoustic instrumentation and electronic processing on which its piecemeal compositions generate massive momentum within predominantly slothful tempos. On “Shapeshifting”, one can hear a constant push-and-pull between the acoustic and electronic elements, as plaintive strummed guitar nudges against a stiff drumbeat with metallic, Gamelan-like flourishes.” (Sam Ubl).