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By: Mark Gomes
Date: 12th Mar 08
Release: Album
To Cure: Hypertension
What:
Landlakes
Who:
ii
On:
Feral Media / Fuse
Where:
Title / Feral Media shop
MySpace:
Here
Links:
ii on Who the Bloody Hell Are They? / Interview on 2SER / Dizzydonor / Landlakes album MySpace
Concentrated listening duo, ii, are Melbourne's best bliss pop-improv act. Their sound pushes the limits of known recording and performance technique - engaged absolutely with the task of pushing forward - but selflessly, in a spirit of auditory-psychic love. Debut album, Landlakes, launched last week at The Toff in mesmerising style, is a variegated masterpiece covered in ears that - like the inward-attuned, thoughtful protagonist of some changing state-of-being drama - slow-turns as a kaleidoscope through chains of contrasting sound-thought.
Opener ‘We Ate Everything' says all in its title, unconsciously describing Landlakes' surveilling-reinvention of whole schools of close-listening music. Starting off with a free played/processed drumming spat, the track inexorably draws guitar, keyboard and field-recordings through Fennesz -sounding shimmer treatments towards a huge, closing granulated basstone. ‘___ Service', ‘Moementks' and ‘Memory Lust' graft Pajo's heart to Parmegiani's brain, while ‘Oho', ‘Tropes' and ‘Clamshell' are simmering blue movies coupling Tortoise with Vladislav Delay.
Like a tapering, colour encephalograph of changing sonic resolve, Landlakes is the tech-patched, pre-cognitive sound of tomorrow's indie.