For me there is something in the melodic approach, the ringing guitars and personal lyrics that reminds me of the halcyon days of nineties guitar bands but with a modern twist, and with the addition of fiddle from Sophia Bartlett and banjo from Michael Rea pushing things in a slightly more countrified direction.
album review
2646 posts
...they use the mellow side of jazz as a starting off point, but happily mix it with classical, pop and a more progressive leanings to lead the listener gently down unexpected side streets.
Over sixteen tracks and a little under an hour, their insistent distorted guitars and brutal, thuggish drums revel in a sort of set construction that feels as though they are squeezing too much sound into too small a space that the guitars and drums seem to take it in turns to add a brick or slide in a block and watch the edifice gradually grow.
...there’s the summery wonderosa of the title track "Autosmile" that’s got to be one of the best sonic uplifts / natural evolves I’ve taken in all year. Honestly, this collection of songs taps into something special, showing the acoustic guitar / singer songwriter schtick has more to offer than certain stadium-fillers would have you believe.
The way the oud steps sprightly around the treacherous tracks and narrow passes like a mountain goat is a delight to follow; and as it moves, there are times where the electronics scatter like birds causing a whirling dance in the dust swirls.
Although only coming in at a little under half an hour, their third album conjoins numerous guest vocalists from all around the world with generally rhythmic but extraordinarily varied musical soundscapes to produce a journey that never lets up.
...Some sounds just find themselves fitting a mood in combination with a moment and an environmental space. Which is perfectly okay, despite what less nuanced opinion holders might decree. Enter then, two albums that best fit the listening niche for Sunday mornings bathed in a blaze of autumn sunshine… which is handy given their close seasonally-aligned arrival.
..things haven’t changed much with the way the album is structured in relation to the band’s previous studio offerings. We have four shorter tracks on (the virtual in my case) side one, followed by a much longer track filling out side two. The album is supposedly themed on ghosts and things that seem to exist but don’t..
...weaving textural space-laden soundscapes from varied electronic means to concoct a series of pieces that describe journeys of vast distances, but experienced from some sense of womb-like calm.
Stitched together with lots of intricate instrumental details and vocal layers, The Counting Game generously reveals its shrewdly crafted strengths over successive spins, to make it one of Antietam’s most adventurous and most accessible go-to long-players.
...thanks to the enthusiasm of Rothko's Mark Beazley, a collection of the poems has been given suitable soundscape backings and with that the opportunity to escape back into the vibrant, grimy streets from whence the initial inspiration sprung.
Asylum Variations shows no retread of the previous album, but a full-on evolution of what was laid down before, that familiar disaffected voice strung between the splashy synthesis and pedal-pawed bite.
...patience reveals the record’s genuinely rewarding virtues via the divergent matrices of its aforementioned arrangements, even if its significance in the wider canon will take a little while longer to determine, principally through ever-enthralling live presentations.
It is quite a brave thing to put together an eleven-piece ensemble for your first solo outing, but composer and accordionist Kirsten Symczycz has surrounded herself with a group of fine and sympathetic players that do great justice to her seven long and winding instrumental tales.
...the artists behind the three new long-form releases and one archival set below draw their strength from such sonic æther funnelling, both consciously and subliminally.
A groundbreaking entity which later fractured into its own versions of the original dream, never to be whole again, and now some fifty-plus years later, the scattered survivors have penned four independent albums that celebrate what each brings to the unfathomable sum of its parts.
Hopefully having garnered some interest from the Japanese psych-ly inclined hordes, Black Editions are here probably more about the business of shedding light on the weirder and less legendary pieces.
..is perhaps the most personal yet, using the extraordinary mix of soundtrack vibes, funky jazz groove and introspective piano to explore what it means to love in this current world climate.