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Inch Time - Any Colour You Like
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Year :: 2005
Label :: Static Caravan
Cat No :: VAN93
Genre :: Lo-Fi
Tracks :: 09
Size :: 52,7 MB
Source :: CDDA
Bitrate :: VBRKBps / LAME 3.97b V2: (preset standard)
Rel. Date :: 07/10/2005
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To say this release grows on you the more you delve
is to woefully play the understatement card.
Conjuring a multitude of elements and moods 'Any
colour you like' is all at once eerie and colourfully
beautifully, a meeting of organic sounds and
electronic or so the brief says û and hell damn those
Static dudes its pretty neat stuff indeed.
'Any colour you like' is beautifully landscaped,
though you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise
fearing you'd stumbled upon some weird and worrying
sense of deja vu featuring Gabriel / Genesis meets
William 'Transformed Man' Shatner on the opening
spoken word introduction provided for by 'Preface'.
Yet stay with it, the textures are delightfully
fluid, gentle almost ambient and yet procuring a folk
like feel in fact it's the kind of release that two
or three years ago you'd rightly expect the likes of
Bubblecore or Fat Cat to fall over themselves to put
out.
Helped out by a host of friends adding guitars,
saxophones, strings and cello arrangements, 'Any
colour you like' is touched with a vibrant sheen, for
the best part its minimal in fact shyly so, its not
until 'As patient as a tree' (track 4) that you're
aware of the electronic content. Before that point
you find yourself graced by intricately layered
repetitive scores that build steadily in stature,
'Voyage to Brobdingnag' with it's almost 'Frere
Jacques' nursery rhyme like walk mooches with a
loungy jazz like demeanour awash with a hypnotic and
decidedly tranquil yet ethnic enhanced lull of what
sounds like bowed cymbals. 'Kyoto (autumn leaves)' is
led from the front by a cortege of snoozing strings
that playfully yawn and stretch, noire-ish in stature
it pinpoints perfectly that whole gothique stylising
as so much loved of the Montreal / Constellation set
especially Sackville and Set Fire to Flames.
'Any colour you like' comes into it's own from the
luxurious 'A rainbow for Alex' onwards, the
arrangements become denser, more focused, lighter in
mood and tonality - and dare I say û funkier. 'A
rainbow for Alex' is the albums centrepiece a
sublimely cosmopolitan after hours slice of aural
sensuality, tripped by the subtle use of chattering
beats its emerges with a chilled out cool as you like
lounge classicism that's replete with delicious down
tempo accents a la Emperor Penguin ('Mysterious
Pony'). The theme carries through to the smoulder
like 'Red in Green' with its late night smoke filled
jazz club haze while the dainty 'Squeezebox' with its
arresting airy Francophile charm neatly fills the
divide between the much missed L'Augmentation and
early career outings of Big Eyes. And just so you're
tucked up comfortably along comes the aching 'Walk in
the Country' with its yearning Vini Reilly-esque
chord work to suitably knock you senselessly and
hopelessly defenceless. Quite an enchanting release
but then I guess you knew it would be. -losingtoday
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[01] Preface [01:56]
[02] Voyage to Brobdingnag [04:13]
[03] Kyoto (Autumn as Leaves) [05:07]
[04] As Patient as A Tree [04:55]
[05] Root Drinking in the Dark [05:08]
[06] A Rainbow for Alex [04:54]
[07] Red in Green [04:30]
[08] Squeezebox [04:21]
[09] Walk in the Country [08:58]
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LAME 3.97beta is now the officially recommended LAME
version and switching is recommended to everybody.
This recommendation marks the death of the 3.90.X
branch of LAME and the --alt-presets (or --presets)
developed and tuned by Dibrom with help of many
original members of this site in late 2001
establishing "the most concise, well tuned, and most
thought out MP3 quality "paradigm" at the time.
The --alt-presets are now being abandoned in favour
of the more flexible -V settings.
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UK Independent