Marconi Union - Distance
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Marconi UnionEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-03-14
Music Label: All Saints
Soundtracks:
- Sleepless
- These European Cities
- Through Glass
- Buildings and People
- Suburb 27
- Inter
- A Temporary Life
Free Music Notes for Distance
Free Music Review: Excellent ambient work
Hit: 5 Stars
According to the dotca.co.uk Web site, "Distance" was conceived as a sort of soundtrack to a nighttime journey through an urban environment in the safe isolation of an automobile. The music is soft and the arrangements are sparse. The instrumentation is mostly guitar and electronic keyboards, other than the saxophone on the final track "A Temporary Life." The music is built on the typical ambient foundations - repeated loops, washes of sound, and so forth.
The appropriately named opening track "Sleepless" is deceptively gentle, but as you listen more closely you realize that beneath the calm surface there is also a restless, anxious edge to the track. "Distance" strikes a balance between sustaining a mood and employing melodies. A good example of this is "These European Cites." At first it seems to be nothing more than a gentle loop with synthesizer swells, but halfway through a beautiful melody (played on a guitar) is added.
Listening to Distance is pure pleasure. It would be hard to pick a favorite track because the effect of each track is cumulative. As for comparisons (always a risky business), fans of Brian Eno (it's released on his All Saints label) and Harold Budd would probably find Marconi Union enjoyable as well.
Distance Poster
What goes around comes around ambient. That's the message from a third generation of electronica artists who were just leaving the womb when Brian Eno's early works were being diffused in the 1970s. They were barely teens when the Orb rolled forth in the '90s. But new artists like Boards of Canada, the Album Leaf, and Explosions in the Sky are taking those early ambient primers and adding geometries of glitch and dream guitar to the mix, creating a melodic brand of ethereal music with an edge. Marconi Union, a Manchester duo, follow suit on a CD that travels in cinematic melancholy and textural malaise. Their songs build slowly, emerging out of a flattened landscape of static and stillness to attain a quietly triumphal beauty. Percussion is almost subliminal in journeys that pulse more than groove. It sometimes gets ominous, with an ostinato bass growl prowling through a Blade Runner landscape on "Inter." But usually they generate a quiet awe, like the slow build of "Sleepless." Expect to hear tracks from Distance in soundtracks and commercials near you soon. --John DilibertoMarconi Union is a reclusive electronic duo from Manchester, England. Their sound has been described as "a post rock cinematic orchestra." Distance, their first U.S. release, is unique, individual and timeless, fusing acoustic sounds, strings and pianos with electronica, post-rock guitars and even occasional nods towards jazz and dub. Described by the band as "a soundtrack to a film that has not yet been made," listening to Distance evokes the feeling of being driven silently around an unknown city at night, observing the activity and life of the urban sprawl in safety and isolation.
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