Tuck In
I first came across multi-instrumentalist Trent Halliday in
his Three Days Dark alias and the album Somewhere
a Band Plays reviewed here. If you read you’ll see how much I enjoyed, so
it is obviously of interest to hear this mainly instrumental release, not least
when Halliday refers to his influences as Terry Riley and Steve Reich, the
former a firm favourite [well, many would state that] and hearing loops and
repetitions in this album’s opener Rainmaker
where the personal nuance is having these recurring from a played acoustic
guitar, a touch to the basics I also like. This is expanded on the second track
Standing on the Back of a Whale where
guitar again provides a foundation, and an ‘odd’ instrument [a mini digital accordion,
or similar?] that sets a very specific kind of minimalism, that is until the
track makes its inherent expansion into a choric fill. There are ‘Spanish’
influences here too, it seems to me, in the rhythms and ‘handclaps’, an eerie
fireworks background-of-sound – the danger perhaps in trying too hard to name
rather than just listen. The repetition in this is a hypnotic, climatic drive
to the end.
As well as individual artists who have inspired Halliday [and
a reference to Sufjan Stevens informs the work of Three Days Dark] he also
describes how ‘the album is minimalist inspired, cinematic,
orchestral-folk, with lots of acoustic instrumentation and some electronic
touches’. It is also playful, I think, in the way for example The Animal Orchestra is carnival-esque,
with Folklore Radical taking a
further tangent to a more percussive sound but within this a cowboy-esque sense
of pace – I can’t explain further though I see here the cinematic equivalent of
a horse racing across a prairie [?] though this then suddenly opens out into
Riley territory at its close.
Then Constellation
returns us to the acoustic guitar as the prime instrument, flamingo influences
performed in the clear expertise of Halliday’s playing – this too seguing to its
electronic phase where the guitar and the light percussive backdrop are lopped
onwards, and then returns to the acoustic core. I think this amalgam of live
playing and ‘electrifying’ works well, and is picked up in the following
guitar-driven title track [with sweet vocal chorus] Paper Lights.
There are further ranges and ranging, all
patterned to repeating as a key methodology. For those more inclined to the
wholly electronic, penultimate Shallows
provides this flavouring in the overall signature recipe.
Paper
Lights is a full musical meal to be savoured. You can get it here.
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