Review Summary: The dance was formal and who showed up in jeans…
Full disclosure: this is a review I do for the album of an old Sputnik friend of mine.
It’s been years since I found myself for the first time sharing music with Kyle (user ‘Iamthenightstars’). Well, to be frank, he shared more with me than I did with him. That is to say, he knew a lot more about a certain type of music than me. And he probably still does. We were knee-deep in the sound of the 90’s emo scene. A sound that is characterized by temporization and mellowness for one part, abundance and melodrama for another part. A bilateral look on music, as has become popular in many other forms of arts over the past decades.
But I’m dwelling…
The point I want to make is that
Green Grass For Miles, on his debut EP, tries his own take at this juxtaposed form of making art. He chooses a mixture of spoken word samples to complement his technical guitar playing (or is it the other way around?). A choice that is natural, given his prior experience in a metal band and a solo technical metal album. The character of these melodic lines is not at all metal-esque however. One could say it is refined but dense.
It goes without saying that such background translates into his instrumental parts mostly taking the forefront, thus the spoken word serving as your ambient drug to unprepare your mind for a structure that often goes crescendo.
It is, of course, indispensable that the spoken samples are of a high quality. Not always evident, as taken out of the context of the primary story, spoken word will many times go astray into territories that are just tedious. I can confirm that this is not at all the case.
Perhaps a tear of two will flow if you pay attention to what is being told, or some quirky smile will shine on your face. Make no mistake , although when the words are spoken they are satisfyingly powerful, the sparkling guitar tones underneath carry these lines to their promised eruption of stringed impressionism.
But still, if you count the prior ingredients and mix them together, it feels like it could wear thin rather quickly. GGFM has taken this into account, and provided more backbone to his structure by adding in the right droning sounds, trumpets or by making use of the E-bow (this is hard to tell, but I suspect it). These tertiary measures take inspiration from bands like
American Football or
Hammock and thicken the pudding into something that lasts a little longer on the tongue (or ears).
Evidently, this release is a more than worthy step into the area of ambient post-rock with some Midwestern emo sentiments flown in. The first couple of tracks successfully activate the senses, while ‘Art Weingartner’ takes it back a step for ‘Dream Sequence’ to lull you into the highly dramatic impact of the last lines. About God, the Devil and interrelationships.
Rating: 3,8
