Released in 2012 on Sargent House
Format: 12″ EP
Overview
A unique blend of post-rock, stoner rock, and shoegaze crafted into a cohesive, perfectly fluid 25 minutes. Hallucinogenic atmospheres of shadowy guitar effects envelope driving, stoner-fuzz bass lines that often liquify into the watery chorus-bass you might find on the Cure’s Disintegration or an Isis album. Emma Ruth Rundle’s mysterious vocals undergo heavy effects, usually pitch-shifted an octave down and drenched in delays and reverbs that often make it so you can make out the emotions but not the lyrics. In the third track there is regularly-pitched vocals (although still drenched in fx), giving you a sense of clarity, like a veil has lifted. Although each track offers something different (from heavy and driving to dreamy and atmospheric and sometimes all of those at once) The tracks are part of a carefully-crafted whole and flow seamlessly, to the point where the whole album just feels like a suite instead of 6 separate tracks thrown onto an ep.
When this came out I couldn’t get enough of it and wished it were longer because it felt like a tease, but now that they’ve released a full length (which is great but something totally different), I’ve realized that this release was just the right length, any more and it could’ve felt redundant, any less and you wouldn’t get the full picture of what they were going for. It almost feels cheap to even call it an EP…in fact I don’t think I will anymore.