Lantscap :: Fragile Peaks (Home Normal)

Fragile Peaks is a deeply engaging (in the sense of the quality of engagement being ‘deep’) slow burner, though that descriptor might misrepresent the intensity of a piece that, fire-wise, is more of a smoulder—a low-lit one at that.

A subliminal smoulderer

Ian Hawgood and Warren Forrest Kroll renew communion under the Lantscap banner for Fragile Peaks, follow-up—if that word’s semantics aren’t unduly strained by an elapsed 12 years—to accomplished debut Varying Degrees Of Alive (Infraction, 2013).

Hawgood is known as curator of Home Normal, for solo and collaborative work on a slew of labels from Morr Music and 12k through to Dauw and Quiet Details to name but few, as well as mastering engineering for a host of ambient-related labels/artists, while the more low-light Kroll has been releasing music for years as Forrest, Dorosoto, and half of High Tides. Lantscap is, if not exactly their ‘happy place,’ a site of felicitous musical encounter, of which Fragile Peaks is a prime exhibit—a work of peace and calm whose early January release seems to have been strategic to usher in a new year and ‘gaze over the fragile peaks of our imminent future with no small amount of love and hope,’—so the blurb lyricizes over this gentle long-form piece of tape-looped mellotron and synth tones interwoven with droning guitar layers. Seasoned Dronophiles may discern in its soft rumbling ambience, and its glacial unfolding over a good half-hour to an eventual shimmering finale, a certain hark-back to ‘the great Chalk & Heemann Mirror guitar based recordings.’ (blurb extract—good spot!).

Overall, Fragile Peaks is a deeply engaging (in the sense of the quality of engagement being ‘deep‘) slow burner, though that descriptor might misrepresent the intensity of a piece that, fire-wise, is more of a smoulder—a low-lit one at that. A subliminal smoulderer, then!

Fragile Peaks is available on Home Normal. [Bandcamp]