I’ve been wanting something that captures the magic of a live performance from these three for a while now and this Maida Vale BBC Session totally delivers on that front. Neatly chisels the synergy that switchblades between its three pillars – that write your own map sensibility that only gets better with every release.
Fresh and fluid, the flow is a liberating one — porous with intent, each member scratching the other’s musical itch, fireflying the potential. Skims into the space-dusted dance of “Lamp Of Glory”, its diodes mercurially medievalised by Mr York (whose bagpipes are always a winner in my book) to run away with itself in squiggly psychedelics and blurring arpeggio. A chaotic light slanting into the church-like sobriety of “Disaster 2” that throws a calming tarp over the proceedings in a drone-based opposite, subtly nibbled and iridescently freckled in a kimono of patinated play.
A pleasant experience that hammocks in your mind’s eye, serves as a precursor to the celestial awe of the last two lengthy excursions, both of which are born from a slow and considered start, but evolve quickly to seduce you with their expressive colour. The alchemic purr of “The Tower Is Locked” sucking you into its meditative rotisserie, layering up in synapse-flooded harmonics and tasty apparitional arcs. A tightening tractive that embers a voices-blurred converse, unfolding into the magnificence of the closing “Weather All”. A track that touch-papers a gorgeously soured angelic that totally leaves you begging for more as its corkscrewing tensive cortex-kisses you in sweet destruction.Another worthy addition to the BBC Sessions hall of fame.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
