| Q magazine - Martin Aston Broken Dog man with Morricone-flavoured instrumental outing. Clive Painter is perhaps best known for Broken Dog, his vehicle for Mazzy Star-style lullably rock. Wolf is his new instrumental alias (helped in part by Broken Dog partner Martine Roberts) and it creates a similarly woozy backdrop, while the mood is Morricone westerns and dusky prairies. Calexico and Giant Sand are close cousins,...with the steam train bells and therimin signature of General View Of The World, say - it's as good as any holiday out west. Except for the odd exercise in minimalism - Driven Away echoes Brian Eno and Steve Reich - it wanders aimlessly, maintaining the same shutter image, but also keeping the spirit of an unchanging, beautiful landscape.
|
 |
 Losing Today - Mark BartonDebut release for the project named Wolf, unearthing the atmospheric tendencies of Broken Dog's and erstwhile producer of Tram and Monograph, Clive Painter. Another album of lush instrumentals may be the last thing you need given the amount of it about these days, but 'Rocket Science' is the exception to the rule. Sure it lulls, courts, caresses, teases and torments but that is only half of the story, within the space of ten tracks Painter manages to burrow into the psyche and to the core of emotions and tranquil desires. Recorded during last year, Painter has painstakingly provided a colourful canvas, delving into feelings of loneliness and abandonment, paradises never visited but instinctively within us all visited every time we dream. These melodic mosaics at times soar with bands as untouchable and tempestuous as Sigur Ros, at others possessing the slow burn qualities of Mogwai, the eerie ghost like chill of Black Heart Procession and the sublime nature of Yellow 6. By using subtle guitar treatments, improvisation and digital wizardry what initially appears sparse grows in stature with each repeated listen. Richly laden with atmospheric heraldry, 'Rocket Science' manages to explore various elements, each track neatly gliding jigsaw puzzle like into the next in some sense maintaining regularity and certainty yet in others managing to cut a distinct feel of uniqueness throughout. Opening with the dragging sounds of melancholia on 'Ignition', it manages to convey a feeling of desperation and futility within a tapestry that is almost middle eastern in sound and texture and almost shadow stepping the masterful Godspeed in the process without the apocalyptic drama. 'General view of the world' on the face of it is a simplistic foray into reverb guitar semantics although coated in an ever so eerie vibe of detachment. 'Black Skies' dallies with exotic landscapes, magnificently arranged, feint chiming guitar that shower a statuesque attitude across a diluted fabric of eerieness brought to the fore by the liberal use of a theremin, overall a beguiling mini epic of sorts. 'Minor Axis' again recaptures and revisits the emotions of solace, touching similar heights scaled so admirably by the likes of Jon Attwood and a host of other atmospheric soundscapers. A strange union of flowing wintry moodisms that coalesce with grandiose rhythmic happy go lucky chord structures that again utilise and impart a sense of distance underlined with hope. 'Rocket Science' the title track is a crafted piece of trippyness that stutters and tumbles in all manner of spacey extremes, though fans of John Fahey will no doubt revel in the sublimely wonderful decor of 'K66' that goes a far way in praise like eminence of 'The Portland Cement Factory at Monolith California', quite irresistible. Ghost like lullabies are the order of the day on 'Driven Away', a superbly chilled devil of a tune. Prized track of the album is 'Out there, somewhere' a dreamy slice of oscillating ambience, slowly unfolding and ascending similar triumphant filled homeliness as the greatest tear jerking anthemic surges of the wronged man scenes in any Morricone scored epic. Think of the more refined and emotionally charged moments of Sigur Ros grooving with the low key tempestuous building blocks typically choreographed by Godspeed, a crushing classic. |
|
|
|