Stereocilia – Crystalline

Drone Rock

Salted in stormy corruption, “Hunters Moon” celestially layers the drama. Twilights in subtle shifts of droning chord mixed with the sorrowful arch of see-sawing strings, metered by this prodding weathered jig.

It’s a marvellous concentrated affair that could easily fill a whole side of vinyl, but abruptly terminates into the “Awakening”. A darkened ambience of spiralling guitar that extends the experience, anchored by a pulsing undercut as chords dramatically feast, density dine in wavering cut-ins, solar-flare the imagined vastness.

An exploration of the epic, Stereocilia always delivers, and something that both of the next tracks clearly demonstrate. The tangled drone fruit hum of “Some Truths” streaking crimson on a brooding pull of scuttling drumbeat and chorusing fret haze. A post rock appetiser to the lush looped canopy of “Catalyst” and its Suicide-like shimmer setting up a solid foundation for this lovely fiery rasp to arabesque through. A scenic sincerity rugged and scarred — the sort you internalise, allow to shadow-paint the back of your eyelids and skull as you bathe in the overdriven churning satisfaction of it all.

An album highpoint (for sure) that dives straight into the graveyard glitch candy of “Low”, a melancholic restlessness misty with ghostly frets and flintly electo-jolts. A sombre study that seems to emotionally puppet the miss-fired ignition of disappointment so well, to be kinetically re-fired on the Reichian jittering of “Silent Water”, its unfolding patternations radiating in a jacasser of mutating harmonics dissolving below a shimmering horizon.

A textural play tied to the drone-trailed kite curves of “Vanishing Act”, its brooding blossoms pecking at this pebbling percussive, texturally darting to snip and cymbal tinnitus. This is definitely an album best suited to the small hours where those daggering details aperture-pour, instinctively glow, atmospherics that sky clasp to the eleven-minute finale of “Our Future Died In Your Past”.

A gorgeously measured beast that sets the scene in a gathering violin drone and clipped wing chords that flex in swarf-like flickers, its thirsty density thrown to a pulsing heartbeat later flowing out to some delicate Durutti Column-esque fretwork. A chiffoned bliss that more than matches the purple splatter of the vinyl as it sentinel-sizzles in echoing secondaries. Medicating angels jivering in shivering mirages that disco-ball some sweet addictives before sliding out of focus on that whispering dronal warmth.

Inspired and atmospheric, Stereocilia never disappoints.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-