Review Summary: today it means even more.
Fall asleep inspired by thought and forget why in the morning, the story of
Yesterday... is one about the meaninglessness of old dreams. Recorded at a live show in the wake of 2012's excellent
In a Lonely Place, it was meant to be the optimistic beginning of a new age and a new album. Evidently, this new age never happened: other musical commitments, a new record label and god knows what else saw to that. New Tape Loop Orchestra material was never released.
Until now that is, but as a gift to Hibernate's super-limited postcard series and not so much an exciting new release as “this old thing” from the archives. In fact, it doesn't seem to be much more than an excerpt from a much larger file cruelly trimmed down to an exact 22 minutes. The title says it all: this would have meant so much – now it means almost nothing.
How brutal then for
Yesterday... to be one of the most hard hitting ambient pieces of the past few months; nothing short of a symphony of distorted tapes, piano notes struggling to stay in focus and a voice crying out in equal parts calm and despair. Disarmingly weightless, the piece tentatively reveals the true depths of its sadness and is only made more powerful by the two years spent forgotten and useless in some dusty hard-drive. You might even say it's aged, because two years ago the release of this track would have meant so much to us – now it means even more.