The best thing about being seriously passionate about music is that the discovery of an artist or band new to you can change your whole day. You then spend your time researching the band, finding out about their other albums, looking up their live performances on Youtube, and searching for gig tickets. Then you sometimes look for similar bands, and thus a whole genre is created or expanded in your music collection.
The reason I write reviews for Echoes and Dust is primarily to discover new music. Granted, I don’t always find something I like, but with ‘Centralia’ by Mountains, I feel privileged to have been able to hear it before it’s even released. There is plenty of ‘ambient’ or ‘drone’ music out there, some of it good, some of it fairly derivative, sticking too closely to the genre conventions. There are, however, those bands that simply create quality content, both encompassing the best of the genre’s conventions and pushing ahead, forming music that is entirely their own. Mountains are one of those bands.
This isn’t an album for those with short attention spans. Each song is a slow-building, ambient drone, building into an expansive epic. An initial melody will develop over time, adding synths, organs, and more acoustic instruments such as the guitar or cello. While the less educated ear may dismiss it as ‘background music’, perhaps accusing it of not doing anything, this misses the point entirely. The songs operate on their own time, slowly creating a huge landscape that seems to completely inhabit the space between your ears. And that’s why you need to listen to this album on the largest set of headphones you can find; if you try and listen to it on the train, or walking down a busy street, you will miss out on the many subtle intricacies of each track.
It’s difficult to compare Mountains to other musicians in order to find reference examples. Personally, this album reminded me of the washing sonic layers of This Will Destroy You’s ‘Tunnel Blanket’, some of Boards of Canada’s more guitar-based recent efforts, and even parts of Brian Eno’s ‘Ambient Music for Airports’. But to make these comparisons could almost rob their music of its identity; this is simply serene, beautiful and occasionally haunting music, full of wonderful little moments and an emotive warmth that is often missing from the genre. Give it the time it deserves, and you will be greatly rewarded.
released January 21st 2013 through Thrill Jockey.
Posted by Joe Purse.
