THREAD OF THE YEAR.
As I scan my albums, here's a few more...
Piana - Ephemeral
Opening with 'Something Is Lost', Naoko Sasaki (aka Piana) eases the listener in through a blossom fall of rustling clicks and diffused melodies that frame the vocals to perfection. Similarlily, 'Early In Summer' takes you by the hand and reveals a swelling thicket of Puccini strings that soar with such grace you'll be left breathless, whilst lazy beats build a crystalline foundation for Sasaki's honey-dipped voice; resultant in a sound reminiscent of Mum's 'Green Grass of Tunnel'. Elsewhere, 'Little Girl Poems' ups the glitch for a composition that drips with grace and unconstrained radiance, 'Mother's Love' strips it back to the basics (guitar and piano) for a heart-wrenching nugget of aural gold, whilst the album closes with 'Beginning', a brief but eminently powerful burst of muted rectitude. If that all sounds like we're gushing; it's because we are, and on the off chance you're still undecided we'll reiterate; THIS RECORD IS AMAZING. Never mind the hyperbole, it's Piana.
The Boats - We Made It For You
Last year's 'Songs By The Sea' from The Boats was undoubtedly one of the albums of 2004. This year's 'We Made It For You' by The Boats is undoubtedly one of the albums of 2005. Released on, and featuring members of The Remote Viewer (and Hood) curated Moteer label, 'We Made It For You' is an absolute delight from start to finish, possessing a gentle charm that quietly instils itself deep within your core. Made up of skeletal fragments (dusty piano through to scuttling electronica), The Boats then allow the various elements to grow incrementally until you're waist deep without having noticed you'd even got your feet wet. With each track a dedication, songs such as 'Sarah Alice' and 'Darren' could easily have taken on the guise of eves-dropping a private conversation and it is to The Boats formidable credit that instead you feel as though you're amongst friends. Lacking the vocal focus of 'Songs By The Sea' allows the gently ebbing loveliness of 'Sarah Alice' and 'Chris Elaine and Lucy' to become expansive well beyond their limited foundations. Flecked with Jen Jelinek, flirting with Satie, Michael Nyman and Ryuichi Sakamoto, 'We Made It For You' is an album you'll want to fully submerge in again and again. Amazing music.
Vladislav Delay - The Four Quarters
Vladislav Delay continues to mine his much loved seam of dub fragranced minimalism, with a sound that seems to have really hit pay-dirt on new album 'The Four Quarters'. Divided into four extended pieces, this full length has lightness of touch that genuinely defies belief; with Delay allowing the music to unfurl like an aural orchid in both the broadest of strokes and the finest of detail. Opening with (you guessed it brains!) 'The First Quarter', Delay initially shuffles into view through a gorgeously rousing blush of diffused atmospherics, onto which he slowly needles bubbling synths, star-bursts of fractured (but in no way imposing) vocals and a spectrum of beats that mine the tradition of his Basic Channel past perfectly. All that and we're only four minutes in. Continuing in a similarly jaw-dropping style, Delay seems to have returned to the pinnacle of his Chain Reaction excursions, encouraging the listener to submerge ever further by offering half glimpsed aural edifices (some distant crowd noise here, a clutch of Arabic indebted instrumentation there) whilst always littering the foreground with enough pronounced intent to guarantee even the most casual listener will remain enraptured. Somehow massaging the best elements of people like Jan Jelinek with the deep soundscaping of Mark Nelson’s fabulous Pan American, 'The Four Quarters' is a record whose beauty and absolute depth really cannot be overstated.
Grand Magus - Wolfs Return
Grand Magus from Sweden are signed to Rise Above, implying that they are somewhat related to the doom genre, but their third album Wolf's Return is still mostly good old-schooled heavy metal. Singer and vocalist JB is also the singer of Swedish psyche-doom rockers Spiritual Beggars, where JB even hit once the top ten of best vocalist in a poll done by a Japanese rock magazine. So you can justly expect good vocals. What we slightly miss is originality, with a very good natured band playing all the tricks of the Seventies doom stoner metal school, but if I didn't know any better, I would feel compelled to say that this is a long lost Candlemass album, with less pathos and more balls though, which isn't a bad thing either. Wolf's Return needs some runnings to get stuck in your head, but then you will discover some truly grand songs like the opener Kingslayer, the two-parted title track and especially the driving Blood Oath. With one outro and three short instrumentals (with Swedish titles), we are left with only seven regular songs, adding up to a good half hour of heavy doom metal, ranging from dramatic slowness to grooving heavy metal headbangers.
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