For anyone like me who have never heard of Early Day Miners this is the 20th Anniversary edition of this Indiana bands most revered record Placer Found and it will be out on double vinyl on Secretly Canadian for the first time, so that lovers of slow mumblecore chillout music can finally hear this album if they missed it first time round.
This album opens with the title track Placer Found that sets the pace to slow laid back chilled out almost unable to get off the couch and do anything, as if your in quarantine or solitary confinement with nothing to do but stare at the walls and dream of the great outdoors, the vocals are whispered almost mumbled so that you may have to play it a few times to even get close to what they are singing about, but you may have drifted off before then.
East Berlin At Night is like your sitting in Alexanderplatz at 2 in the morning and wondering why its so quiet with no traffic and only the odd person wandering by as the mumbled vocals tell a dark tale.
Texas Cinema is like a tangential re-working of some of Ry Cooder's soundtrack to Paris Texas that revels in it's slow laid back almost non groove to just lull us into laying back and staring at the sky while listening to it.
In These Hills is an 8 minute plus slowly unfolding dawdle in the hills that makes Her Name Is Calla seem like speed freaks, this is slow chilled out and barely their music to drift off too.
Stanwix sounds like a whispered tale of despair no matter what it may be about lyrically as for my ears the vocals are so hushed as to barely register as to what they are singing about, it's just as laid back as everything else on this album.
Longwall is the tune you put on when you are sat stating at a long brick wall and contemplating counting all the bricks in the section in front of you and hoping you don't fall asleep before you've counted them all.
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Desert Cantos is at over 13 minutes long the longest tune on this album and as everything is super slow s as it slowly unfolds it feels like a lot longer than 13 minutes long it also feels like they have been listening to Big Star and wondering what it would sound like if you played a 45 of Holocaust at 16rpm. Very slow sad and emotionally moving with some wonderful harmonica playing, eventually after about 9 minutes or so it seems to build to a peak of sorts.
The final two songs are bonus songs not on the original album and the first of them Prospect Refuge is a rather gentle and sparse tune not that different to the rest of the album so that fans are going to be happy to have some more Early Day Miners to remain well chilled out too.
The second bonus tune is Blue Casino that appears to be played at the start at almost double the tempo of the much of the rest of this album and I still doubt it makes it to being much more than 60BPM before reverting to the same slow chilled out blissed out music as the rest of Placer Found.
If you like very slow chilled out music then find out more at https://secretlycanadian.com/early-day-miners-announce-placer-found-20th-anniversary/ https://earlydayminers.bandcamp.com/
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