Album oteviraji dve tiche postrockove kolaze dvojice Carter – Arn. Tom ma za sebou jiz dlouhou karieru jako jeden z trojice vyhlasenych psychedelickych improvizatoru Charalambides (loni jim po dlouhe dobe vyslo nove album “Joy Shapes” na znacce Kranky). Muze se pysnit i radkou solovych dlouhometraznich zarezu (album “Monument” vydane take vloni na teze znacce). Tento improvizator se v posledni dobe zamiloval do lap steel kytary, ktera tvori pater jeho sonickych improvizaci. Vanessa Arn (pusobici jinak ve skupine Primordial Undermind) zde prihrava na tzv. “triwave tone generator” – vlastnorucne vyrobeny syntak. Jejich tiche improvizace jsou o dialogu obou zminenych nastroju. Krehka atmosfera skladeb funguje nejlepe pri poslechu na sluchatkach nebo v tiche mistnosti. Recenzent casopisu Dusted prede mnou prirovnal jejich snazeni k tissi verzi soundtracku “Paris, Texas” Ry Coodera, coz mne prijde jako velmi vystizna charakteristika.
Ukrajinska trojka The Moglass, ktera pusobi na nezavisle scene od roku 1997 dava po letech privatniho fungovani o sobe poprve vedet na delsi plose oficialniho nosice. Stejne jako dvojice Carter – Arn i The Moglass stavi na zvuku elektrickych kytar, ze kterych tvori dlouhe z postrocku vychazejici temne ambientni skladby. Skupina ale s primarnim materialem rada dale pracuje, vrstvi jej, ruzne upravuje a micha s elektronickymi ruchy a utrzky melodii. Vysledkem je dilko s temnou, ale ne pesimistickou atmosferou, kde vas pokazde zaujme jiny hudebni motiv ci detail, jenz je pouhou jednou vrstvou z mnoha, z nichz je skladba slozena.
Priznam se, ze na prvni poslech jsem desku pomerne uspesne odzival, a to jeji obe casti. S pribyvajicimi poslechy ale nadseni albem roste. A podobne mohlo dopadnout i prvni stretnuti s koncertem The Moglass na inkriminovanem koncertu lonske Alternativy. Jedna se totiz o hudbu velmi introspektivni, kterou neni radno smahem odsoudit! A navic ten papirovy obal…
Pavel Zelinka – www.radioakropolis.cz
Review
the Moglass/Tom Carter & Vanessa Arn-Snake – Tongued / Swallow-Tailed
The easiest way for me to explain why Tom Carter’s music clicks for me is that when he’s “on” I don’t think about the fact that his music and style are so absurdly limiting and obscure. The places he goes and the momentum he gains transcends the natural analyst in me, and I close my eyes and float, letting the music carry me. Such is the case with the new collaboration with Vanessa Arm. Evoking the mist and haze from burnt offerings, the first track realigns your brain’s sense of time. The second, with it’s expansive, hushed whispers realigns it’s sense of space.
The Moglass’ contributions are yet another batch of stellar songs from this largely unheralded group. Driting tones, distant hums and gentle sheets of sound gather and collect around your skull, bending your head as you drift out on waves of transmissions from deep in a remote forest.
the Moglass/Tom Carter & Vanessa Arn-Snake – Tongued / Swallow-Tailed
From the label that most notably brought us those two amazing releases from the Moglass, comes this latest missive from those mysterious Ukrainian drone / sound artists, this time sharing a little disc space with Americans Tom Carter (Charalambides) and Vanessa Arn (Primordial Undermind). Carter and Arn offer up two tracks totalling over 30 minutes, of lonely lap steel guitar, hovering atop drifting sheets of muted feedback, ghostly harmonic traces, and mournful melodies twisted and pulled apart into bits of sound, drifting dreamily through an ambient dronescape of whir and flutter. The Moglass give us three gorgeously creepy and haunting drones assembled from what sounds like bowed metals, reverberating into dark ripples of sound, minor key melodies melt into swirling pools of crystalline warble, flecked with strangely affected guitars, almost percussive, plucking out other alien melodies that give the whole thing an almost post rock vibe. As with everything on Nexsound, gorgeously packaged in a silkscreened cardboard sleeve with a little cardboard obi!