Autumnal is a diptych of floating tableaux of wistful bucolica and gently heart-string tugging micro-symphonics created from a mélange of treated guitar and processed vinyl, with organic assistance on strings from Svitlana Samoylenko, Alex’s partner in side project Olan Mill, and electronic enhancement in the form of computer-mediated post-production tweaks.
It’s become a trope of the ambient music review genre to refer to the evocation of a sense of place, but what of a sense of season? Autumnal finds Alex Smalley and Simon Bainton following their acclaimed Lapses with a new installment in their hymning of the Big Long Now whose transportive musical contents come season-ed; so evocative you almost feel the sensations of October air, veiled light, russet colours glimpsed through September mists hanging. Drawing on source material of several years vintage – from 2007 sessions that issued in the debut, Pausal EP, it may strike as a hark-back to themes previously explored there; but there’s more than a suggestion – not just in the title’s prompting – of the material being differently shaded and finished with the eponymous theme in mind in the transfer from sketchbook to final framed work.
Autumnal is a diptych of floating tableaux of wistful bucolica and gently heart-string tugging micro-symphonics created from a mélange of treated guitar and processed vinyl, with organic assistance on strings from Svitlana Samoylenko, Alex’s partner in side project Olan Mill, and electronic enhancement in the form of computer-mediated post-production tweaks. Its heavy-lid progressions are redolent of a strain of postclassical, space/post-rock (hold the rock) and holy minimalism that might be roughly mapped with coordinates close to Stars of the Lid, not far from Labradford, and, more remotely, Arvo Pärt, though they make the territory their own. To the prosaically titled “Side A” they bring a spare poetry of supine sonorities, draping a succession of cathedralesque chords across the soundfield, and wafting them over and around each other to stage the aural equivalent to timelapse cloudwatching. They then ventilate the contours of “Side B” with similarly expansive airs, languorous harmonic sweeps that open up and out to the wide sky, each decaying to near silence before its successor sustains or resolves with subtle inflections. The listener languidly lists amid this controlled drowning in delicate texture, stirring only to register the gradual intensification in the succession of overlapping slow-choir swells in the final section of “Side B,” before it all ebbs away in softly effected tonal ripples, like autumn light fading to dusk.
Eloquent testimony, then, to Pausal’s artisanal prowess in weaving various sounding materials into a euphonic tapestry, Autumnal deploys minimal of dynamics to maximal effect. It further cements the Hampshire duo’s growing reputation for expansive ambient-drone – unafraid to flirt with prettiness, while avoiding the lapse into the tweeness that imperils this genre; affectively too, comfy being quietly moving without fear of becoming cloying. It also serves to keep us in a state of becalmed entrancement till next album, Forms, is delivered via Barge (due early 2012).
Initial ltd edition cassette release by Students of Decay sold out, Autumnal is out now on Bandcamp. [Release page | Amazon]
