Let me just paste in the tags. “ambient blisstronica electronica hypnagogic pop laptop music”…
I guess this covers a few bases. Take opener ‘Open Hand’. Ambient it ain’t. It’s more like Gene Krupa teamed up with a 56K modem.
There are short snippets of tracks like ‘A Gentle WAV’, whose title is better than the tune (warning: may contain banjos) but these just serve as dividers to the longer and more substantial pieces – with the exception of ‘Chimes for the Lighthouse’, whose title kind of describes its sound and which is strangely mesmerising. ‘Palindrome’ manages to be, yes, ambient but towering at the same time, like there’s 10 Brian Enos trapped inside your hi-fi.
There’s a lot going on there, more than on ‘Hello New Likers’ which to start is kind of scratchy cut-ups rather than anything that could be called ‘music’ in the conventional sense. However, it soon descends into a circle of hell somewhere just south of Milton Keynes, its precise intention I’m sure. Speaking of which, it soon merges into ‘Opening’ which probably soundtracks John Carpenter’s nightmares – although he doesn’t know it yet.
The title track is weirdly disorienting, like the speakers have gone out of phase on what might have otherwise been a conventional guitar tune. But “conventional” round Thee Moths’ house is A Bad Word.
Just as it seems things couldn’t get any odder, ‘Bronze Lucifer’ breenges in with its kinda off-kilter krautrock and is the most conventional track on here – well, it would be if it didn’t eventually wrap round on itself before disappearing up its own well of noise. Which, in a sense, sums up the album and much of the output of Thee Moths – always interesting, always different, never quite what you expect.
www.theemoths.co.uk
