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The most pressing question i have about this
band name is: is it about guests at a Venusian
Motel (a motel on Venus, or just one run by
ethnic Venusians) or are the motel guests from
Venus? The name is very unclear as to which
word is the noun and which of the other two
are adjectives, and this bothers me.
Well, only a little. And i suppose that it's
not really too important. Anyway, the band is
a duo of Mike Skagerlind and Chris Romero,
both of whom are credited with guitar and
synths, Romero also adding percussion and
bass. Romero is apparently on loan from
ambient drone act Numün.
There are four tracks here, clocking in at
about 17 minutes. Opening track Metrosands
starts off with a vocal trill that sounds
Arabic to me, not the call to prayer but a
female voice with a different sound. To this
they add guitar, clear and sparse. There is a
vocal sample and some other sounds layered in
that give this a faintly industrial feel,
almost like a sparse ambient remix of Front
242.
Title track All Was Carbon starts
with rumbling noises before the guitar comes
in. The guitar is in layers including really
some nice picking, sparse and reverberating
against whooshing, spacey synths. The whole
song ends with a roar, seemingly of space, or
winds over emptiness.
The longest track here is A Future Survey
of the Great Inundation which just
barely stretches past the seven minute mark.
Tt starts with rumbling sounds and a church
bell in the distance. There is also a
crinkling sound off to the rear right on my
headphones. Every time i listen to this at the
office, i wonder if the girl sitting in the
cubicle behind me is rustling a bag of chips
or something -- the sound seems half heard
like that. But the song rumbles along, guitar
added in slowly over ominous drones.
And finally we end with The Re-entry of
Embers. This is a nice and more of a
song than the ambient meanderings that make up
the rest of the EP. There is a nice guitar
layer, a clattering guitar, and some chugging
percussion. It reminds me of Durutti Column.
This is an odd little EP by an odd act with a
funny little name. But they are doing some
nice stuff, interesting and a little
different.
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