24 February 2011

Plinth - albatross (2010, Deadslackstring)

Solo project of Michael Tanner, from Dorset, South, UK, Plinth floats inside the atmospheric ambient instrumental genre with a preference for organic sound textures, with contemplative and very lightly psychedelic influenced moods.

“Albatross” is a strange object, collecting five, very free, interpretations of the Fleetwood Mac track of the same name, but this whole record of 55 minutes sounds mostly like one long single track cut into interconnected similar parts.


Not much happens, it sounds like an empty afternoon, where you're kept turning over the same worries and obsessions, while it's rainy outside. It fits perfectly with this wish you may have sometimes of simply, doing nothing. Just to let your mind coming back down to pure reality. You might want to lay down on your couch and take a nap, feel the consciousness dissolve as there is no more, for a while, a need to hurry.

Playing guitar parts, harmonium or dulcimer, Michael Tanner, is helped at certain instants, by the harp of Aine O'Dwyer, and the piano of Richard Moult or Nick Palmer. These additional instruments are creating the scenery where our drowsiness is established.

There is no one in view, empty fields, shores deserted by the persistence of drizzle, which gives a certain lustre and freshness to every rock or trunk, while we feel definitely routed about our hopes of springtime. But yet, no urge to complain or to curse vainly, as the process of cleaning the soul of amassed stress is on its way. 

This is austere, we feel the rain on our face, the wind in our hair and ears, with our feet in the occasional puddle but also, we are at the right place, enjoying this very moment.

My favorite part is "Albatross II" with slow, poignant and melancholic guitar playing, this exact time just when you're lost in your thoughts, half-dreaming half recollecting past dreams, hopes and events, feeling the wish to change the reality with just a sigh, the flutter of a butterfly's wings. 

The last part, "Albatross V" is like an echo of "II" just more soothing and lulling, not sure you would want something else than closing your eyes at the end.


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