Cécile Schott seems to have taken the opportunity on this latest Thrill Jockey album to go fully retro electronic with the likes of the Yamaha Reface, Roland Space Echo and Moog Grandmother being given the chance to glimmer in the dusty twilight that abounds on The Tunnel And The Clearing.
Spread across seven tracks and encompassing the kind of plunky Latin rhythms that are so redolent of a certain sort of Seventies party, Cécile weaves a series of spells; warm, dreamy ones that evoke watching a fairground ride from some distance, but being unable to prevent yourself swaying in unison and losing any sense of what is up and down.
There is a kind of timelessness at work here, everything moving at its own pace, existing in a hazy vacuum; and when the voice appears, it too is a ghostly glimmer, hidden from view with the lyrics on “Revelation” — “Truth, reveal yourself to me”– seeming like the supreme irony. The voice drowns in a sea of echoes and ripples, always obscure and as if only half heard. The feeling of inertia on The Tunnel And The Clearing is actually perfect for the songs, and the pleasant stasis, although not rooted to the spot, feels more like a bunch of balloons tethered but able to move with the wind. The undulating samba rhythms are simple but evocative and appear like the one solid part amongst layers of haze and swathed in gauze. The juxtaposition with the little points of light that appear and disappear throughout the pieces is part of the charm and the sunset melancholy of “Implosion-Explosion”, with its liberal spray of space effects, opens the sky right up with its wordless sighs adding a touch more humanity. At some points there is an intensity that is hard to explain and a sense of unspecified hope in the ascending organ tones.The semi-whispered lullaby mantra of “Gazing At Taurus – Santa Eulalia” really suits the loping rhythm, while the instrumental section “Night Sky Rumba” keeps you nice and warm with its cloak of effects and its simple little cyclical movement. That sense of comfort which plays through the album is dispensed with on the final track, “Hidden In the Current”. The rhythm disappears entirely to be replaced by the pulse of an oscillating wave which accompanies the voice until dissolving into a kaleidoscope of shattered images before coasting to a halt.
Colleen seems to stand apart from the ethereal likes of Grouper and Ana Roxanne, moving in the distant abandoned fairground circles of your lucid dreams. On the strength of this, a delve into the back catalogue is a necessity but The Tunnel And The Clearing is a great place to start.-Mr Olivetti-
