Tenor-Vossa (CD) / 1972 (vinyl)
Given the deluxe gatefold treatment, Breathless’s 1986 debut LP The Glass Bead Game is being plucked out of relative obscurity to shine once again.
Diving straight in there, the slow burn of “Across the Water” soberingly soaks like a Normil Hawaiians ditty, the instrumentation feeling itself round, has your head-swimming in its glorious ornamentals and sculptural curves before the recoiling drums pin back the butterfly’s wings to full-on lament.
The measured softness of “All My Eye And Betty Martin” serenely waltzes in there, the production-soaked cream of the vocals dropping out to accommodate those loose drum spikes and confetti frets. The returning vox lyrically caught on ascendant guitars that bring to mind the wind whipping my coat-tails as I whizzed about the streets on my trusty four-speed racer back in the day.There’s certainly a pleasant jiver to the embroidery, some would say quintessentially English; the careering cuteness of “Count On Angels” impaled on echoic circulars, metered by a knitting-needle click, solidly nodding to the idyllics of Felt. Its mosaicked colours bristling on an acidic chop, suddenly bursting the frame like Modern English used to do before they tasted the overseas riches, the conversation sparking around it in duetting doubles, step-stoning that elasticated fall in a brilliant balancing act that had 4AD written all over it.
“Monkey Talk” is the star though, the brooding impetus of its tribals stealing it completely, as Ari Neufeld‘s bass noses its solid gothic disposition. I’m lying down in a field listening to this as the dog runs manically around, the vastness of the blue sky eating into those eastern glints and that tasty bend into the wind futility of the vocals. It’s little wonder This Mortal Coil took the lead singer Dominic Appleton into their fold, that gloomy swoon of his is really bewitching, while Gary Mundy‘s vocal shadowing somersaults your perception in shivering spinals as that late eighties silver nitrate radiates the space and atmospherically taps into the slipping abstracts of the cover painting. Dramatically filling the canvas up, “Every Road Leads Home”s rolling percussive sends out countless curves, stokes the mania. The chanting lyrics cut up on glistening knives, pinpricked in clustering silk as that John Fryer production splinters the dust. The trouble-maker grate of Mundy’s guitar epically propelled outwards as the weird little melodics between coax you inward, as if he were crayoning over his alter-ego’s greyness whilst taking a Ramleh / Skullflower sabbatical (if Discogs is to be believed).The simplified verve of “Touchstone” pares things back, nourishing its vocal purity on kiteing thermals and swaying out-growth as its fluxing guitar and broken drums burnish this heady Tears For Fears like lift. It’s almost criminal that this group has been so overlooked, the dub-like “Sense Of Purpose” or the Eyeless In Gaza-like shimmer of “See How the Land Lies” giving plenty to wrap your brain around. The dark allure of “Stone Harvest” ends the experience on struck match wooshes that surf your hemispheres, its textures tensively teetering on Tristram Latimer Sayer’s swagger as the lyrics cine-scope a tarnished horizon.
I somehow missed out on Breathless the first time round, a mistake now gladly corrected.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
