This is the second album by Welsh psychedelicists White Noise Sound and it has been produced by DJ Phil Kieran in tandem with Cian Ciaran from Super Furry Animals.
‘Heavy Echo’, which I believe was the single, sets us up for what turns out to be a pretty awesome ride. It’s a sixties, druggy, drone-y vibe with trance like vocals topping things off. ‘Bow’ starts out with discernible lyrics this time and it is on this track that perhaps White Noise Sound’s true influences come to the fore. Spiritualized (circa Lazer Guided Melodies) and as that is my favourite, that’s alright by me. Piano leads us in to a quite meditative track with gently interweaving melodies. ‘All You Need’ is a bit of a monster, deserving of loud volume on any stereo. It’s a pulsating track with a swelling bass line and some nice synth and other hard to identify sounds darting about over the top. It conjures a paeanic vibe.
‘Can’t You See It’ takes us further out into the stratosphere and adds some organ to the keyboard mix. This is daubed over with hypnotic, ethereal vocals. ‘Red Light’ cranks things up with a riff heavy, bass heavy attack, bound to assault your senses in a live setting. It’s a lot like Loop in actual fact. Once again there are melodies floating about that make the whole thing quite ‘listenable’. ‘Step Into The Light’ moves things forward to the award winning version of Spiritualized but they pull it off with some aplomb and it’s hard to knock them for it. I actually think this track might have worked even better as an instrumental, in that it is those passages within it that have the most impact for me. It builds itself up on a tide of horns and strings.
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‘Do It Again’ I like a lot. It rides along on a see-saw organ and I wouldn’t mind a bit of a guitar freak out at some point but I’ll live. It makes you want to clap along. ‘Feel It’ is a tremendous climax to the album. It has the guts to follow it’s acidic electro roots and although one could argue it is a bit out of place, in my opinion it fits into the album perfectly. They could do more of this for my book.
All in all you could describe this album as a derivative of a derivative, which means that it is a double negative, which means that it is a positive? Either way, I have not heard many albums better so far this year.
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