Frustrated Music Hack Spills Pretensions

OFFSHORE by EARLY DAY MINERS

Having listened to altogether too much tasteful Americana of late, last weekend I was in the mood for something different, some new cosmic freakout or experimental rock to blow me away. A chance listening post in Shibuya led me to this record. As the sleeve sticker had it, "a 37 minute epic in six parts". Bang, direct hit on my muso nerd bone.

It opens with "Land Of Pale Saints", a driving ten minute instrumental that thankfully doesn't sound anything like the weedy UK former indie act The Pale Saints. There are layers and layers of guitars building on each other in a manner not a million miles from Pelican's prog metal, augmented by rising and falling keyboard washes. About five minutes in the guitars drop out, and the drums take centre stage, as they will again and again throughout the record. Purposeful and ominous, they lend a foreboding air of apprehension until this too stops, and is replaced by a brief interlude of strings and feedback, signaling a move away from noise and into a quieter place. This stretch, starting with "Deserter", has a hushed, nocturnal quality (most of this record seems to take place in the dark), the same spooky ambience that Daniel Lanois brought to Emmylou Harris' "Wrecking Ball". The music stretches out, becomes reflective and the first vocals appear, a man and a woman singing together over rolling percussion and a lost harmonica echoing in the dark. The lyrics of "people lost underwater" and a "ruined city" conjure images of loss and floods, and bring New Orleans' recent history to mind, as they must surely have been intended to.
From here, on into "Sans Revival". The assorted instruments come together to make a beautiful shimmering texture, all-enveloping and strangely uplifting, despite the vocal exhortations to "give up" and "give in to your desperation". Chiming guitars sound like floating dust motes turned golden by shafts of sunlight penetrating the darkness. The climax is the first moment of silence we've heard on the record, probably the end of side one in old money.
"Return Of The Native" is a quieter, more subdued piece with a broken female vocal, that elides into "Silent Tents". The only word that will do for this segment is "aftermath". The previously roiling percussion is slowed down and the guitars become mournful and elegiac, playing long low notes that speak of loss and regret. Eventually the drums fade away to nothing, and a guitar and keyboard hold a protracted slowly decaying note as the sun rises on muddy brown devastation.

The closing track "Hymn Beneath The Palisades" sees the martial drumming from the opening returning with renewed purpose. This rhythm, the snap of cymbals and the discordant notes of the guitars all herald a vengeful (re)construction. About halfway through the guitars begin to climb. They fall into step with the drums and redouble in intensity. Something big, dark and dangerous is coming. Just as we think it is upon us, it stops. The record ends, and you know you're going to push that play button to hear it again. In a just world, the music mags would be celebrating this instead of fawning over Thom Yorke's latest laptop sulk. I don't think I've heard emotion expressed so clearly through electric guitars since Explosions In The Sky's "The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place".

37 minutes. You could spend it watching an episode and a half of a Friends rerun, or you could listen to the best record I've heard all year. Your choice.