Album Review: Inventions – Inventions

Sleep’s Jerusalem, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene and, to a lesser extent, Pink Floyd‘s Dark Side Of The Moon and Ozric Tentacles’ Jurassic Shift. These are all albums whose tracks remain emotionally welded together, no matter how many attempts are made to pull them asunder. Those who harbour a strong passion for long-players of this ilk will glory in the birth of Inventions whose debut demands instantaneous full exposure.

Having previously stuck rigidly to their own bodies of work, there was always the fear that neither Explosions In The Sky‘s Mark T. Smith or Matthew Cooper, the sole member of Eluvium, sending audio tapes across the heart of the U.S., would bring a cohesive series of fresh sounds to the table and, to some extent, their music does touch base with their past bands. However, there can be no doubt that as a united force they have also revelled in the freedom this new project has granted them. Consequently, they have created an instrumental album of the most beautiful, minimalist, ambient rock music that resonates at a completely different frequency from all that has gone before.

Yawning into life, the aptly-titled “Echo Tropism” tugs gently at your sleeve; its soft flow pulling you into a sculptured world where joyous emotion soaks into the flora and resounds along currents that circulate around your still form. Drifting through the tracks, breathy vocalisations begin to create harmonics that rise through the richly-layered subsonics. The spartan, often crunching, percussive elements keep the whole locked into a central spine so that as the synthetic patterns stretch, in the main, they remain integrated and vital to the whole.

Softly throbbing industrial machinations thread their way through tracks like “Entity” and “Psychic Automation”, the former pitching a subversively robotic burble into a series of pressure-releasing industrial pistons that curse as they snort and hiss their disapproval. The one track that wincingly tries to break rank is the coiled snake and bustling city soundscape of “Sun Locations / Sun Coda” which, curiously, assimilates elements of trance music. Happily, the ambient post-rock of “Peacable Child” reasserts the flow by slotting a pitter-patter arpeggio beneath a warping synth to create rotational drag. The remarkable effect is not unlike rhythmically cupping and uncupping your ears. For an extra-sensory experience try closing your eyes - I was alarmed to discover a tank of slowly pulsing, bioluminescent jellyfish staring back at me.

Constantly shifting, there is an astonishing organic flow to the album and to force unwieldy terms like electronica or shoegaze upon this collection would seem crass. It does touch base with the genres at several points during its life-cycle, yet the focus remains rooted to the emotional impact it has. Flooded with the same warm tones that emerged from ISIS / Deftones collaborative project Palms’ debut and imbued with similar instrumental pressure points to those of The Ocean’s Pelagial and Uneven Structure’s Februus, this pulsating album positively glows. Make time for this single-sitting long-player and you will be rewarded.

Also online @ The Line Of Best Fit = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/reviews/albums/inventions-inventions-149597

Album Review: Explosions In The Sky – Take Care Take Care Take Care

Here we have an album title that smacks of a last goodbye and yet, in a recent TLOBF interview, Explosions In The Sky assured us it won’t be their finale. Guitarist Michael James pointed out that despite this fact “it does have this emotional pull to it of ‘goodbye’. Even if it’s for five minutes or five years, there’s always an emotional component to a goodbye”. He also pointed out that by repeating the title three times “the words begin to blend together and ‘Take Care’ becomes ‘Care Take’, so we’re taking care of each other and saying goodbye and it just had this very sweet and sad feel for us, which really matched the tone of the songs”. Good news then because this particular collection of tracks has all the trappings of a post-rock masterpiece and is certain to leave fans of the genre craving more.

This is the band’s sixth album, and there is more of an encompassing rise-and-fall nature to the songs than we have bared witness to previously. They have threaded elements of dance and pop into the mix to grant us a healthy glimpse of their current collective states of mind. This is particularly noticeable on the tracks ‘Trembling Hands’ and ‘Be Comfortable, Creature’. The former is a short little ride though furious chanting to a driving rhythm that plants crescendos that peak and soaring bass that lifts you up high where you can throw shapes unnoticed, whilst the latter, an initial saunter down a sun-streaked forest path, leads to a neat free-falling riff, a flurry of electronic touches and a series of 65daysofstatic dancing beats.

Like all good albums there are emotional peaks and troughs. You’ll dip down as you feel the pain of the gorgeously mournful, tender touches of ‘Human Qualities’ and ‘Postcard From 1952′ which both have a see-through frailty about them. You’ll hear tapping fingers on pages, jogging feet, slow breathing through the nose, a rise in pressure inside your ears. Like paper-skin, the threaded veins of strings and gently pulsing heartbeats show through to speak of tough times in the many languages of music. You’ll climb up and marvel at ‘Last Known Surroundings’ which feeds tribal pipes, chiming keys, cyclical riffs and a persistent snare into the echoing machinations of a vast industrial mill to create a hedonistic wall of sound.

If there is anything missing here, it’s a lack of shocks. Only those brief moments of industrial psychedelia really make your jaw drop. One of those moments occurs as the countrified pop and bleak desert rock of ‘Let Me Back In’ bids you adieu. It’s a warped groan combined with a jarring reverse vocal and it’s almost enough, on it’s own, to make up that deficit. Whether it hits you hard or not you’ll still find youself sitting in momentary silence. So, as you exhale, a breath you didn’t realise you were holding, and press play once more, to allow yourself another pass though the picturesque scenery of yet another classy Explosions In The Sky album, do consider whether it’s their finest. Hyperbole maybe but, from this reviewer’s perspective, it certainly comes close.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2011/04/explosions-in-the-sky-take-care-take-care-take-care