Astrïd
The West Lighthouse Is Not So Far
POLAND MONOTYPE RECORDS mono087 CD (2015)
Here we have a species of deconstructed post-rock from a group who you could say are in the same vein as 90s Bristol (UK) grouping Crescent, for those who remember them. The West Lighthouse Is Not So Far is a sixty minute-long proposition which is clearly the necessary duration for what they want to achieve, but personally, I think these days if you can’t make your point as a rock band in 35 minutes or less then you might be risking the criticism of being self-indulgent.
The first track, ‘Pierre Noire’, presents a group who grew up with a fascination with the rock improvisations of Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Thirteenth Floor Elevators and so forth, when it was de riguer to devote the entire second side of your album to a “wild” and “groovy” freak-out improvisation (more usually in reality a tepid “blues jam”) [1. Editor’s note: the Thirteenth Floor Elevators never issued a side-long jam on any of their albums.
Pink Floyd have done side-long tracks, e.g. side two of Meddle, but quite clearly this was a structured and composed piece of tapework assembled from several recording sessions, and not a single freak-out improvisation as Paul seems to characterise it.
I’ll admit The Grateful Dead were prone to “tepid blues jams”, but even so this side to their work is not exactly represented on their studio album releases; you tend to see it more on the 1990s Dick’s Picks CD live sets.] but too young to have actually seen them live. Thus, have they garnered their understanding by watching a lot of VH1’s Classic Albums programmes. And quite rightly.
Track two, ‘Madonetta’, trundles along with acoustic guitar and oboe and before too long an accordion joins in. Along with a broken cymbal. Mice Parade have had some success with this sort of approach before. Atmospheric. Slow Post-rock. The label / festival Nice Weather For Airstrikes have cornered my local market in this sort of thing. Next, ‘Goulphar’ – sorry I lost concentration a bit there. The fourth track, ‘Lantena’, features multiple accordians and a drum kit played with brushes. The whole thing proceeds like this; pleasant enough – no big surprises, little in the way of dynamic; good but overall hard to get excited about. It sounds like Astrïd have sat down and worked out how to write background music for a film or a television series. Mogwai had some success doing the music for Les Revenants recently, which is perhaps where they got the idea from but Astrïd just aren’t in the same league.
Monotype have a fairly varied catalogue at present; this Astrïd cd is grouped in with new releases by Kevin Drumm, Carl Michael Von Hauswolff, Marc Hurtado & Z’EV and Toshimaru Nakamura & Martin Taxt to name but four. Monotype are clearly casting their net wide, but given the current state of the music industry (or what’s left of it) who can blame them?