An acid trip to the beach.
'Seagullsong' – somehow like the long intro to Loch Leven on Arab Strap's final masterstroke before being consumed entirely by their melancholy mood. The gulls dot the sky and splash the coats of beachgoers. The sea laps onto a stony shore and inside your head, there is a tiny ant working the controls. Madly, nothing comes of it (the song, not the ant). It is a bunch of gulls harking, with the sea close by and a beautiful loop-like piece of ambience that somehow hints of a melody. You will be happily dazed.
And from this loop of the natural and obscure cometh the 10min+ friendly goliath 'Weir's Way', warbling, droning, trumping and glistening for an unhealthy quantity. It's like you're staring at God through the trumpet of Miles Davis... The shimmering light and golden brilliance expands and contracts, holding you in a state of hypnotism and the girls/mermaids/living Kandinsky sketches/sexxxy zombies all sway and taunt and simmer at the surface of a pleasant, effortless vibe-out. For anyone else, it would be artistic suicide to have a stripped, almost-nothing 'song' that lives and breathes and remains in existence only because there is such a big soul keeping it buoyant, but for the lad named Aidan Moffat this is The Way.
It has been noted previously by others that the man is capable of writing such atmospheric music that pictures come into the listener's minds eye without a trace of thought. This is cinematic sound in all its brilliance; it is everything right about following experiments through and composing via the heart and nothing else. Yet again Mr. Moffat casually walks into your heart, lines it with his own decorations and motifs and you'll love him for it.
With the way all of these gliding, sliding, penetrating, ethereal songs coat your very being with honey and a dark aftertaste, it is no surprise, then, to find out that this collection of sound was recorded just prior to the final nail coming down on the truly Scottish collective, Arab Strap. Downbeat, atrociously sombre and congealed with blood and emotion, this is yet another organ laid out to observe and watch die.
At worst, this could be seen by the pessimistic and inwardly snobbish as music to meditate to when you're smashed off your face with a new drug called 'Pipznazm Frinkles, Yes?' For those with forethought and a genuine boredom for all the popular, generic band rubbish that is swamping the industry, this is the much needed retreat into something almost unmentionably basic and primal, despite the constant use of computers.
...Elemental psychosis at its very best.