This is an eccentric though very intriguing record.
There are six tracks although the divisions between each seem arbitrary you could easily imagine this working equally well as one single composition.
It is James Brewster's fourth solo album but his first under his own name (he previously used the alias Mole Harness) and the first time he has experimented with vocals.
His use of voices is far from conventional, appearing to be more interested in the voice as instrument rather to communicate any coherent message.
Brewster is described as a "sound explorer" and these explorations have clearly taken on a more expansive nature since he relocated from Bristol, England to Malmö,Sweden.
At the same time, he hasn't burnt all his bridges but has called upon the services of Gravenhurst's Nick Talbot and Suzi Gage of the Bristol-based Indie band You And The Atom Bomb.
His most striking English connection is ,without question, Men Diamler whose wild blues-folk solo spots have been making waves in the West Country and beyond.
Brewster has partially tamed Diamler to deliver vocals for the short opening track Vel Kvonen in which he resembles a Swedish opera singer!
Diamler's vocals are reprised in the following track Vraikan Sundan alongside a real life opera singer; an Albanian woman named Egzona Gervalla who Brewster met on a Swedish language course.
From the same class he also found an Iranian puppet-artist, Soodabeh Haji, and an Englishman, Daniel Goody, who plays in a Swedish Indie-pop band (I'm not making any of this up!)
The album's two longest , and most memorable, tracks are Vraikan Sundan (11:45) and Wingbeat Fission (13:39). Both are meandering pieces that draw upon modern composition, field recordings, spoken word, ambient electronica and, if you're lucky, something resembling a straight song structure. In each, the delicate tension between the various elements constantly threatens to disintegrate into pure noise.
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Transitions from one style to another are not always smooth or cohesive. On Crumbling Bells, Brewster makes an unconvincing rapper while Wingbeat Fission lurches awkwardly into crude digital beats to destroy the gentle pastoral mood set by Nick Talbot's warm vocals.
The album title is taken from a line in the latter song although this fact is academic since words are only abstractions here. Brewster frequently layers or tampers with vocals until they become all but undecipherable.
Landfall begins with bells and field recordings - like setting the scene for a meditation session before the voice of Brewster offers such surreal reflections as: "you see the first ever mirrors were used to view a bird skin waistcoat / by these reflections the guards were confused"
Throughout the course of 42 minutes the music threatens to spill over into a nondescript mess but just about holds together.
The drawback to setting his stall on unpredictability and variety is that Brewster deliberately sabotages the organic themes and even flow that lie at the heart of this album.
James Brewster's Website
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