Four-part icebergs
Posted by Christian Carey in CD Review, File Under?, Indie, UncategorizedMountains
Choral
Mountains is an instrumental unit, but their latest for Thrill Jockey, Choral, isn’t as mistitled as it first might seem. The instrumentation may be that of a post-rock unit, but the textures they adopt resemble the four-part writing so often deployed in vocal ensemble music.
Indeed, Mountains revels in long, sustained harmonies; evoking a wintry soundscape. Sometimes, as on the title track, a single chord will populate the terrain like a seemingly immovable surface – an iceberg of diatonicism. But around it, synthetic undulations and percussive punctuations activate the proceedings, allowing a glacial triad to unmoor, drifting ever so gradually in a beguiling sort of ambient minimalism.
On “Melodica” the sustained pitches are more discrete, linear formations; their gradual convergence as verticals punctuated by cymbal interjections, hued as glassine drips of icicle percussion.
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