Not content to close the door after the horse has bolted, this site goes on to build a monument to the now-departed beast, equipping it with wings and apocryphal fire-breathing tendencies, pausing only briefly to bestow upon it a made-up history as a champion hurdler, and then charges a load of confused Irish tourists a tenner to tour the empty stables.  I know this was released a wee while ago now, and all those who come here trying to sniff the future would be nonplussed by the fetid stench of weeks-old shellac, but I’ve only recently got around to unearthing this from amidst the steaming pile of fine 2008 releases. 

I must confess on first listen (and before I’d read their names) I wouldn’t have pegged Fessenden’s Joshua Convey, Steven Hess and Stephen Fiehn as American.  After the ominous wintry field recordings set to subsonic rumble of “Not Sleeping Just Resting”,  and then the drones, loops, and layers of static of “Mid-Swing” , I had this pegged as Scandinavian.  Probably Finnish (sounds a bit like Pan Sonic, to be fair).  However it was the warmth of “Diode” that melted the walls between my crude national stereotypes; with its intricate electronics and light-touch percussion I began to hear echoes of oh-so-patient jazz dabblers such as Radian and Rothko.  All of this is brought together with an assuredness of touch within the pulsing, abrasive “A Walk In The Park” which gets a drummer to accompany the burble of the River Styx.  v1.1 is a clever record, so clever in fact that it transcends all boundaries, earthly or otherwise.

I’ve probably asked this before, but if someone could listen to all this stuff for me, and tell me what I like, it’d probably free up a bit of time for me down the stables. I could probably fix that dodgy latch on the door. Practice buying stuff and listening to it with a copy of v1.1 from Other Electricities.