Blow wind, blow… one-take nautical folk anthems / underwater futures produced by John T. Gast and MC Boli, marrying minimalist, quasi-ceremonial orchestrations and massed pipes of un-peace to spacy Berlin-School electronics and plate-shifting, ship-sinking UK soundsystem pressure. 35 minutes of music. On ‘Domestic Saga (All Is Lost)’, wistful reeds extemporise against white tides of high-lonesome synth drift, sonar bleeps and sparsest percussions tumbling through 20,000 leagues of reverb…drowned-world echoes of John Surman’s kosmic Cornwall, Anna Själv Tredje’s epic alpine ego-dissolve, even Namlook/Hawtin’s horizontal techno meditations, all rendered ultra-uncanny by JTG soundboy mischiefs x the conservatoire poise/formality of Boli Group. ‘Ava Maria’ comes at you like an army of pissed-off, undead sailors through the fog – slow but tooled-up and sure of purpose, 100% bad news for you and anyone else unfortunate enough to be holidaying in this til-now quiet and idyllic fishing village with no internet or mobile reception. Properly heavy, heady material: bellows-blown thickening the air around you, pressing on your temples, eventually threatening the full Kananga. But 'Thank You Lord' - with its centrifugal, quintessentially Gast flute-loop (or harmonium or melodica or whatever it is) locating the pagan-folk energies in grime and vice versa - effortlessly steals the show. Propelled by torpedoing sub-bass and bombastic martial string/brass vamps fit for the court of Neptune (release the motherf*****g kraken!), draped with silken weather-storm keys and a surreal voiceover that sounds like a rogue Danish naval officer narrating his own mental collapse, it's just... woii. Unlike anything else out there...
12" $18.95
02/01/2019