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Elegiac – Elegiac – album review

(All City Records) https://elegiacupp.bandcamp.com/ A meeting of likeminds bringing a sideways sort of wisdom to bear on the world? Or decorated old gits from the performing arts having an enjoyable moan? Probably both. regardless: I’m of the mind that Elegiac, a collaboration between Ted Milton and Graham Lewis (with the help of electronic composer and […]

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Elegiac – Elegiac – album review(All City Records)

https://elegiacupp.bandcamp.com/

A meeting of likeminds bringing a sideways sort of wisdom to bear on the world? Or decorated old gits from the performing arts having an enjoyable moan? Probably both. regardless: I’m of the mind that Elegiac, a collaboration between Ted Milton and Graham Lewis (with the help of electronic composer and sound artist Sam Britton), was once a happy accident whose initial spark has been given more air, just to see what happens.

The opener ‘Vous Et Ici’ is a marker of sorts, there to provide us with a handy road map, not so much a song than a set of almost separate elements to be memorised for negotiating the rest of the album, using a weird but poppy marriage of an old Dome beat and jazzy sax blurts, Aksak Maboul-style. Ted Milton’s voice is employed here to introduce, to reassure. “The mad stuff will turn up, I promise”, it seems to say.

Though Lewis and Milton don’t need much introduction, this record, however well received it will be received, often feels like it’s the “music of the ignored”. The phrase popped into my mind whilst listening to the gloopy canal-side mutterings of ‘The Daffodil Woman’, which may well be the sonic equivalent of staring morosely at the scum on a duck pond. The LP is stuffed with these sorts of private carry-ons that won’t be seen as addressing anything much outside of delineating furtive, private thought bubbles. That’s not to say it’s full of morose soliloquies: we get informative rants on pigeons and instructions on boat building for one thing. Some lines are magnificent: “Post gig ego lair” is the best description of a VIP or backstage area you could wish for. But however hilarious or odd, tracks like ‘Vancouver Slim’ often drip with the sort of clammy, ghostly oomska that binds together the pages of V S Naipaul’s paean to loneliness, Mr Stone and the Knights Companion.

Elegiac is not easy to sit down and listen to in one sitting, either. As hinted above It is a record that is supremely absorbed in itself, and, moreover courtesy of your electricity supply.  But Elegiac is a very good record to accompany the listener whilst they do something else. These tracks – a collection of subatomic jiggles – operate undercover and therefore have the time and space to fuse together to make interesting, irritating ear worms that you, once you subliminally tune in, can’t quite shake off. The sonic equivalents of ignoring the old fella in the pub with fluff in his ears who’s looking at you.  Also the sort of thing you’d imagine Viv Stanshall making if he’d decided to chuck the whimsy and get into personal computing. There are definitely elements of later Stanshall on ‘Pelican House’.

So: on a number of subterranean, crepuscular, liminal levels, it’s a record with a knack of transporting you to yet more times and spaces.  Ones that often have a filmic quality to them. The low level drama invoked in tracks like ‘One Two’, ‘Boat’ and ‘The Swish’ operate as street level John Carpenter, but with chewing gum stuck to their soles. ‘He Folds’ is maybe a weird update on Roxy’s Bogus Man, it’s the furtive bass sounds that do it, scurrying about backstreets. You can almost inhabit the track, with its sweaty palms and dirty collar.

It’s odd, but very very moreish. Like tasting some foreign cake.

Source: louderthanwar.com

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