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I make no excuses for my fandom of Robin
Guthrie. His early work with Cocteau Twins
in the 1980s opened my eyes to the
possibilities of sound, and his solo work
since 2003 has intrigued me and provide me
with lots of calm listening.
Atlas is his latest EP, and
comes to us three years (!) after his last
album. So what has changed? Well, not much to
be honest. Oh, sure, this isn't exactly the
same as his previous releases, but it not like
he has suddenly started doing thrash metal or
something. No, this is four new tracks of
meandering guitar and mellow tones.
The title track kicks us off mellow and
cinematic, guitar floating along with some
sparse piano. Very lovely and light, just a
floating haze. He adds in some new wavish
keyboards on Metropol, the keys
droning under a guitar that whirrs like the
soundtrack to Bladerunner. It
gets really loud and dense in the middle of
the track.
Without a Word reminds me of Imperial,
his first solo record. The front guitar layer
is loud and sparkling, positively glistening
over some light rhythm.
The final track, La Perigrina, starts
off quietly with some organ, but slowly grows
into a traditional song with drumming, some
bass, and a great guitar part. This is a
really good tune to wrap things up with.
So this is a cool EP of interesting music,
but it is so short! All four tracks barely
fill twelve minutes. It seems that lately
Guthrie releases a lot of these really short
things, and they are pretty, but i long for
him to try something longer, to stretch out
his ambient chops.
But, well, he is following his vision. And I
have been following his journey for … well,
almost 40 years. So I trust in the process,
and am willing to go wherever he takes us
next.
But really, if you haven't heard anything
from Mr. Guthrie before, well, this is a good
entry point of solid tunes.
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