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Monday, 14 August 2006 04:18

Over the course of the album, a single monolithic pattern develops. The lyrics are printed as an uninterrupted paragraph. Songs stumble into one another. Riffs stretch languidly out over vast stretches.

Early Day Miners shifts and shivers through the six tracks on Offshore, its first release for the taste-making Secretly Canadian label. Over the course of the album, a single monolithic pattern develops. The lyrics are printed as an uninterrupted paragraph. Songs stumble into one another. Riffs stretch languidly out over vast stretches, inhabiting the first trick of minimalism: repeat until it sounds new again. Touted as a student of Daniel Lanois (U2, Brian Eno), Early Day Miners mastermind Daniel Burton brings with him the echoes, dense desert atmospherics, and jangling percussion of his mentor. As one would expect, the production is immaculate, the mixing of John McEntire (Tortoise) brilliant, but the music itself doesn’t keep speed. In particular, the instrumental tracks falter under very much scrutiny. “Land of Pale Saints” and “Silent Tents” are layered, yet not complex, driving without direction. Closer “Hymn Beneath The Palisades” fares somewhat better, sounding like Tortoise with the fuzz at full volume. Even here, the song teeters just on the edge of depth, but never fully dives in, too in love with its main riff to move on.

The clear standout is “Sans Revival,” which emerges almost as the refrain of the desolate “Deserter.” Both employ Burton’s vocals to the best effect, with the latter’s abstracting denunciations such as “everything we chase is empty without fill” clearing the air for the cathartic chant “Give up giving in/Running hand in hand” that forms the mantelpiece of “Revival.” The vocals are a perfect match to the music, but appear in less than half of the overall playing time. Unfortunately, the three vocal tracks are also the most musically interesting, leaving the listener wondering why the instrumental tracks are there at all.

At times the arrangements come off as incomplete and uninspired, unable to escape the easy criticism this sort of album is expected to garner. It is nothing if not internally consistent. The subtle sea-change of the drones, the currents and the textures that run just beneath the surface, envelop and anaesthetize, but over the course of a full length there are too few tricks to draw out devotion.

RIYL: Tortoise, Calla, Bauhaus

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