Grails - Burning Impurities

  by Andrew Carver

published: 6 / 5 / 2007

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Review

Instrumental group Grails provide another fine entry in the canon of instrumental rock with ‘Burning Off Impurities’. While fans of bands like Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Calexico will hear some similarities in Grails’ approach to music – the tempo shifts of the former, the well-defined roles of the various instruments of the latter – the group has its own unique character. A long-running fascination with Middle Eastern modalities is the foremost. The thump of drum, a soft drone in the background, metallic percussion, and spindly notes plucked from some exotic instrument – Emil Amos’ bouzouki, one presumes – transports the listener to the ‘Soft Temple’ of the opening track’s title. The music isn’t, however, just about an exotic sepulcher, as a coruscating electric guitar and the sort of brass Ennio Morricone used as shorthand for dusty western landscapes joins in. The music is also speckled with flashes of experimental noise, like the metallic ‘Silk Rd’ which gives the band a real workout. It starts with the gentle reverberation of strings and a ghostly drone, ambles along pleasantly enough as the volume slowly builds, dips away, returns on a reverberating guitar line and shimmering cymbals, then breaks into a run. Having peaked once or twice it slides down into a spacious valley of barely plucked notes – preparation for another dash to the song’s climax, all crashing cymbals and chord stomps. After that it’s but an easygoing lope to the tune’s end. The band is also capable of building up a good groove, with a song like ‘Dead Vine Blues’ making excellent driving music for those long stretches of empty highway when blue skies turn to black.

Track Listing:-

1 Soft Temple
2 More Extinction
3 Silk Rd
4 Drawn Curtains
5 Outer Banks
6 Dead Vine Blues
7 Origin-ing
8 Burning Off Impurities

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