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Tuesday 16 May 2017

I Heard Voices


This is a b-side from an obscure London band released as the third track on a cd single called All Ones And Zeros back in January 2006, recorded at Death In Vegas' Contino Rooms by DiV's Tim Holmes. The Early Years put out several records around this time, then disappeared for a few years and came back in 2011 with a single called Complicity and then back again last year with an album called II. That's the facts out of the way.

This song, I Heard Voices, is a long and expansive trip. It starts out with some noises and a lone repetitive guitar part. A krauty groove comes in. A voice starts muttering. There's an organ adding some drones and textures. The guitars are spindly and psychey, painting their way through the first part before really coming to the fore in the fifth minute. By the ninth minute things are way up and beyond, the drums thumping and the guitars taking it on and on, in a loop but doing something different too. At ten minutes thirty seconds there's a shift and the whole thing is driving itself home, guitars grinding their way through and to the end at eleven forty. This could easily be overdoing it in terms of length and focus but the band avoid that, keeping the interest and the drive, with the rhythm totally locked in, the playing compulsive, building something new.

I Heard Voices

3 comments:

thewalker said...

good god. That's magnificent.

We are going to need an exhaustive list of all music recordered at the Contino Rooms.

Stat.

Brian said...

Nice piece of writing, Adam. Described brilliantly.

JC said...

I can see me putting this on while lying on a beach somewhere and just getting completely lost in the sounds under a gloriously hot and blue sky.

Fantastic