Legendary Hearts

Legendary Hearts

Music From The Elevator

Not Not Fun

Miasmic Melbourne new age prog duo Legendary Hearts (aka Andrew Cowie + Kieran Hegarty) first entered the public eye/ear in 2012 but their music has only grown more opaque with age. Music From The Elevator is their 2012 debut, originally released via the Dungeon Taxis label, and captures their chemistry in altered states of sprawl, symbiosis, and swoon. Six expressionistic oozes of infinity gauntlet guitar, slow-motion drum machines, and warping synth, filtering in and out of focus like glares against glass, unfeeling neon aglow in smoke and smog. Each piece reflects (and is named for) the next higher level of the structure, from the low-lidded fusion lurch of “Basement” up to breezy cosmosis chillouts “Rooftop” and “Fire Exit.” Long-form, liquid, nebulous, and narcotic – Legendary Hearts walk a wavelength all their own, on their own. Remastered by Lawrence English in Brisbane, Australia. J-cards designed by Britt Brown.

Legendary Hearts

Aerial View

Not Not Fun

Legendary Hearts ooze an elusive chemistry. The collusion of Andrew Cowie’s disembodied synth sensibility and Kieran Hegarty’s fluorescent liquid guitar lines result in strange medicated states not easily grasped on first pass. Their previous (and only other) recording, 2012’s Songs From The Elevator, plays a little like the softest soft-rock sieved through a porridge of melted pills: chemical, blank, alluring, indistinct. The duo’s latest psychoactive sculpture garden, Aerial View, takes inspiration from a similarly liminal, haunted zone of transience – vacant, nocturnal hubs of travel – but pushes the project into richer, more irradiated moods. “Vanishing Point” and “Acceleration” spill and slide through blurred, lofty passages of legendary soloing and glassy synth exploration, coming in and out of view like hazy Tantric waves of tonal emotion. The more condensed pieces – “Terminal A,” “Terminal B,” “Stopover (Snapshot)” – connect the dots between, half-choreographed mood swings of starved beats, wealthy fog, and sunset guitar heroics. Haunted dreams of carpeted horizons, illuminated nothingness, on the way from some place to nowhere. Lift off, look down, let go. Mastered by Lawrence English at 158; artwork and design by Suzanne Pfutzenreuter.