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The Dead Sea is an Australian band that started out of the project of Tim Bruniges. He has since expanded the line-up, making the band a trio, and they have released an excellent album of droning, keyboard heavy post-rock.
Slow Jet is the intro to this record, a few minutes of whooshing sounds and wee-wooing keys, then thunderous drums and some heavy synths, all setting the mood as "deep space". Okono continues the same general ambiance, but adds what sounds like an organ.
A guitar finally joins in on The Devil Bends, as does some heavily echoed voice. This song is disorienting, especially on headphones. The voice moves about crazily, panning between speakers seemingly at random. Overall though this song reminds me of Akron/Family, which is to say it has that sort of stoned Americana feel with a nice steady jam.
The fourth track on the record is called III, and it is a slow building guitar track. This is similar to what Hammock are doing, a low rumbling guitar whining away against some formless drone made out of intense reverb and some vocal "Aaaah"-ing.
The first lengthy song at the album is Zabriskie Point, which clocks in at about eight minutes, while most of the previous tunes have been around two minutes long! The Dead Sea do well with the additional room in which to space out the song. It starts with some synth ambiance, then echoed guitar comes in. The guitar builds like an Explosions in the Sky song in layers that slowly ad, along with keys and martial drumming. Eventually it all comes to a stadium-rock climax of soloing guitar and thudding drumming. Nicely done.
It is back to the short tunes with Nulla Desiderata, which is two and a half minutes of faint synths, ponderous guitar, and tinkling keys, that all combine to build a dense sound. It fades suddenly into Little Lights, which is less than two minutes of echoed guitar, chiming along like something July Skies might do.
Departure Gates is a longer tune of slowly chugging acoustic and electric guitar in nice layers. This might be the standout track here, as it is a strong post-rock tune. Fans of Explosions in the Sky will like this. However, the next track, Banquet, is more for fans of Boards of Canada. It is a short interlude of keys and synths. Finally, The Dead Sea wrap it all up with Bandicoots, another longer song. There is a substantial intro of delicate guitar arpeggios over a bed of synths in a very Hammock-like drone. Electro beats skitter in the background as the song grows, slowly but nicely, to a thunderous climax with lots of drums. This is another really lovely tune.
Overall, this is a worthwhile release. They are not reinventing the wheel or anything, but The Dead Sea have crafted a fine record. I look forward to seeing what they do next.
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