mick mercer (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} mickmercer) wrote,@ 2004-07-15 22:50:00 |
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EGO LIKENESS
WATER TO THE DEAD
NOIR/Dancing Ferret
It s always intriguing when records turn up, minus any press release baggage, with precious little detail on the sleeve, but you just know from the way it looks that it’s good. The tell-tale marks are in the implicit poise rather than simple presentation, and it’s almost the restraint is what marks this record out as worth buying. With the instruments and musicianly duties listed mainly being keyboards and programming, you’d expect something bland or torturous, but you get quite the opposite, marooned happily between divergent currents of Industrial, Ambient and Ethereal (they call it Industrial trip-hop, but the beats aren’t curdled enough), where the voice cries and sighs over a hotbed of skilled filleting.
The title track is refreshingly powerful in its skittishness, lightly resigned vocals and lashings of guitar, and it’s reassuring to find so many pauses, changes and attention to detail, which also ensure nothing is overtly fussy. Then the album opens up to continually deliver more of the same, but in many different guises, with ’16 Miles’ being guitar slurry on which slow, tense vocals float, making it nicely dour pop, and ‘Above The Soil (Isobel’s version)’ is grander, with a sombre mood bashed out on piano.
There are subtle differences in Donna Lynch’s artistically teased vocals on each track and with the whisked activity of the band behind her purposeful presence ‘Isabel’ is like an underground Berlin. ‘Mandala’ (a Stu P. Didiot/Ohtagaki composition!) is emptier, often quite still, where the mood creeps up from such gentle components to weave a powerful spell, and then they prove they’re not quite there yet when in ‘The Breach’ we get synthy trails and airy vocals, then the exciting darting musical spasms of ‘Hurricane’ are flattened by Lynch failing to rival their sharpness, but she’s cleverly exposed in ‘Axis’ with its relaxing, quaint keyboard patter.
‘Traveling Son is firmer, and even more traditional with its emotional glaze, and turbulent waves of energy, the lyrics burn through the soft mucus of ‘Wolves’ as the haunted vocals dominate, leading gently into the morbid end of ‘Wayfaring Stranger’, with quavering vocals creating an echo of their own in a stripped down Clannad way.
A beautiful series of songs to end a gorgeous record.
http://www.egolikeness.com (great images)
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ego_li
http://www.archer.angelfallstudios.com/
http://www.archer.angelfallstudios.c
http://www.ferret/com/noir - label
WATER TO THE DEAD
NOIR/Dancing Ferret
It s always intriguing when records turn up, minus any press release baggage, with precious little detail on the sleeve, but you just know from the way it looks that it’s good. The tell-tale marks are in the implicit poise rather than simple presentation, and it’s almost the restraint is what marks this record out as worth buying. With the instruments and musicianly duties listed mainly being keyboards and programming, you’d expect something bland or torturous, but you get quite the opposite, marooned happily between divergent currents of Industrial, Ambient and Ethereal (they call it Industrial trip-hop, but the beats aren’t curdled enough), where the voice cries and sighs over a hotbed of skilled filleting.
The title track is refreshingly powerful in its skittishness, lightly resigned vocals and lashings of guitar, and it’s reassuring to find so many pauses, changes and attention to detail, which also ensure nothing is overtly fussy. Then the album opens up to continually deliver more of the same, but in many different guises, with ’16 Miles’ being guitar slurry on which slow, tense vocals float, making it nicely dour pop, and ‘Above The Soil (Isobel’s version)’ is grander, with a sombre mood bashed out on piano.
There are subtle differences in Donna Lynch’s artistically teased vocals on each track and with the whisked activity of the band behind her purposeful presence ‘Isabel’ is like an underground Berlin. ‘Mandala’ (a Stu P. Didiot/Ohtagaki composition!) is emptier, often quite still, where the mood creeps up from such gentle components to weave a powerful spell, and then they prove they’re not quite there yet when in ‘The Breach’ we get synthy trails and airy vocals, then the exciting darting musical spasms of ‘Hurricane’ are flattened by Lynch failing to rival their sharpness, but she’s cleverly exposed in ‘Axis’ with its relaxing, quaint keyboard patter.‘Traveling Son is firmer, and even more traditional with its emotional glaze, and turbulent waves of energy, the lyrics burn through the soft mucus of ‘Wolves’ as the haunted vocals dominate, leading gently into the morbid end of ‘Wayfaring Stranger’, with quavering vocals creating an echo of their own in a stripped down Clannad way.
A beautiful series of songs to end a gorgeous record.
http://www.egolikeness.com (great images)
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ego_li
http://www.archer.angelfallstudios.com/
http://www.archer.angelfallstudios.c
http://www.ferret/com/noir - label
