Description:	Digi-pak CD on Silber
	Format:	CD
	Genre(s):	Experimental Indie
	Label:	Silber
	Price:	£9.29
	Availability:	In stock. Dispatched in 1 working day.

4
...according to our Phil on 11 February 2010.

Another new one to me. The cover looks an awful lot like an old Piano Magic sleeve. In fact musically it's not a million miles away from Piano Magic. 'An Index of Birds' is a post rock album which wears it influences on its sleeve. Part post rock, part slowcore, part shoegaze think of bands like Hood, Mogwai, Piano Magic and you're somewhere on the way to sussing out what's on offer here. It's very competently done though I will say and if you're into those bands and that sound I can't see any reason why you won't like this. There's lots of lovely orchestration carefully positioned which add an extra dimension to the sound... making it richer and fuller. The more I listen to the album the more I think this band have something about them. It's done with style and panache and for what is essentially an over saturated genre this is far from superfluous. It's a very varied album with the songs dipping from instrumentals, to songs with vocals, slower more broodings tunes and then more energetic ones. It's all over the shop and it's a shop you'll want to visit!

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Sound clips for An Index Of Birds by Carta: on CD at Norman Records UK. CD, Silber, silber077, £9.29.

What their label says...

“...like many fine bands before it -- Joy Division, Low, Mogwai among others -- Carta seeks to use rock
band instrumentation to emphasize reflective mood rather than simply traditional performance. Unlike
many other predominantly instrumental rock acts of recent years, though, Carta are blessedly free of the
go-nowhere dullardry that ended up giving post-rock a bad name -- the group’s songs are all miniature
portraits that benefit from careful variation within a generally propulsive structure.”
~ All Music Guide

Carta blends all of the elements we at Silber loved about indie bands from the 1990s like Low,
Tindersticks, Hood, & Piano Magic. Slowcore. Post rock. Shoegaze. They’re all & none of these things.
They’re Carta.
Carta formed in 2002 as a studio project having a revolving membership around Kyle Monday & Jason
Perez. In 2005 they recorded The Glass Bottom Boat with the band drifting into hiatus during a two-year search for a label (eventually released by Resonant in 2007). By that time, the band had undergone a complete transformation, with all former members gone except for Kyle Monday & Ray Welter they regrouped with Oakland drummer Raj Ojha (who had just left electro-post-rock band Run Return) & bassist/guitarist Sacha Galvagna (Charles Atlas). The new version of Carta began to write entirely new material rather than trying to re-work the old songs.

Originally planning two separate albums (one song-focused & another made up of more ambient
experimental tracks), An Index of Birds emerged as a cohesive body of work from the disparate sessions
recorded at different times & studios. Cellist Alex Kort (ex-Subtle) returned to work on several of the songs & Lorealle Bishop took up the mantle as the band’s new female vocalist. Former Continental drummer & Christopher Willits-collaborator Gabriel Coan mixed several tracks on the album, & eventually became Carta’s dedicated drummer.

Recorded & mixed by Carta, Sean Coleman, & Eli Crews (Deerhoof, Why?, Citay) & following the
direction to ‘make things sound like they have been recovered from a sunken ship’, the result is an album that recalls the debut in feel but has both a more pastoral & more sinister tone. Placing more importance on vocals this time out, “An Index Of Birds” was a dedicated attempt to move beyond the stereotyped post-rock idioms & investigate textures & composition. Tiny electronic landscapes, soundtrack bombast, krautrock-inspired psychedelia, & brooding melodrama all find a home on an album you might hear on an ambulance ride that could end in salvation be it life or death.