Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Christmas presents

Atlas Sound - Scraping Past

Atlas Sound - Ativan

Forgive me, I said I was going on vacation and I am, it's just that I got a bit bored here in Christchurch where it's Boxing Day and raining, which is indeed quite nice and granted I am going to take advantage of K-Mart's Boxing Day Sale shortly but oh my god with all this talk to best of 2007s and what not I think I just happened across my favourite thing of 2008. My friend Ronnie has already forecast his two favs as Magnetic Fields and Destroyer's new one (not entirely a hasty decision I think) but I would have to say right now that my favourite of this coming year which hasn't even started yet is Atlas Sound's Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel. It's the solo project of Deerhunter's Bradford Cox. On first inspection it sounded like the ambient moments of Cryptograms but now, getting further into it, it's a whole heap more; ambient with percussion to propell it along, building itself on weird bass wriggles and ascending guitar warbles, it's positivly dripping with that atmosphere that makes Deerhunter so terrific. It's not all ambience, it gives way to odd echo chamber ballads, under a drug rug, bleary eyed and just hurt enough. These two tracks give a pretty good idea of the range that the record explores ('Ativan' being the ballady one) and they're my present to you.

[Atlas Sound Myspace]

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