You know how sometimes you stick a record on and you’re immediately spirited to a particular time or place or scenario via some kind of sense-memory transporter beam? That. I’ve just stuck this rather beautiful slice of hot pink and milk marbled vinyl on the ol’ Technics, and I find myself lying contentedly in the chillout area at a dance festival, perhaps ID Spiral at Glade. Lava lamp patterns swirl over Gaudiesque shapes formed of nothing more than white fabric stretched over wire frames. Nearby, a slightly muddy but happy fairy is doing poi. In the distance, flags flutter in a gentle breeze. Ah.
Which bit of over-written nostalgia is my way of saying that album opener Your Sentries Will Be Met With Force is an ambient synth track featuring a fab floaty vocal by Tunisian singer-songwriter Emel Mathlouthi and just enough of a rhythmic drive to keep you twitching through the after-effects of your evening, and also that it’s very lovely.
The rest of the A-side largely dispenses with anything resembling a beat, and on two of the tracks Moore’s synths are paired with the twinkly (but thankfully not twee, or at least I don’t find it so) harp of Mary Lattimore. The B-side is entirely taken up with the evocatively titled My Time Among The Snake Lords, which clocks in at fifteen sprawling minutes, starting out in glacial ambient mode, picking up a little bit of a sparkle as it goes along, and then about halfway through gaining a bass guitar line which I have to admit is a teensy bit too bushily moustachioed for my taste but which doesn’t spoil the vibe too much.
In conclusion I give this album “pretty nice stuff to kick back to” out of ten, but I give the first track “aw, dude, I want to be in a field full of weary ravers so much right now” out of ten, and it’s worth buying on the strength of that (and, yes, I did just cheat and go back and listen to it again after the record had finished).
I bought this from Boomkat. They call it Modern Classical / Ambient.
dogrando writes about some records 