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My attention and affection were caught from the start; blue lotus emits entrancing layers of surging guitar drone which are freed, rather than pinned down, by a rock-steady drumbeat. The rising tide washes through the airwaves, scouring them with a tantalizingly smooth abrasiveness. Softer and more shimmery, parallel lines picks up a bassline that seems to have come straight from a Cure song, lending the track a bit of pseudo-familiarity. The repetitiousness of a slow paced, up-and-down six-note bass rhythm make E10 @ 182 (7:11) seem like the longest running track on the disc, which it is.
analogue 9 expands through an oozier realm, with an almost-brass-and-string-like orchestration, which is soon dissolved into another gritty cosmic swirl, back by a slower tempo. Sweetly grungy, built to last features indistinct vocals, very much stirred into the mix, carried away on the ebb and flow of feedback swells and mid-tempo rock beats. a better life since (1:49) is the least distorted piece, idling in rich, carefree strumming and light cymbal beats.
Despite all the talk of "rock", most tracks languish at an amorphous and soothing pace, as does stay ahead, far behind or the (mostly) beatless pintail gate, which swelters in a rippling haze, laced with exploratory bass wanderings.
Abstractly dissonant, instrumental weaves a certain amount of noise-as-art into its screeching/ruffling textures (though the piece abuts incongruously with the muted jangle of telegraph hill). The disc closes with the appropriately named aria, wafting in an oddly neo-classical style (odd because it's still electric guitar).
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