Description:	CD on Pickled Egg
	Format:	CD
	Genre(s):	Free/Psych/Acid/Alternative Folk
	Label:	Pickled Egg
	Price:	£12.49
	Availability:	Dispatched within 2-5 days (on average).

5
...according to our Phil on 19 November 2006.

Big Eyes are back only they're now a family! They have expanded and are now The Big Eyes Family Players. The family now features Jeremy Barnes (A Hawk & A Hacksaw), Rachel Grimes (Rachels), James William Hindle, James Yorkston & lots more. I'll start this by saying I really like this a lot. It's quite a gentle sounding album stuffed with Eastern European romance and melancholy. If you've taken to this new folk scene and are enjoying it then you'll more than likely dig this. Its largely instrumental and at times there's nods to Yann Tiersen and other such melancholic composers. Totally lush we think.... Think I might have one of these. On Pickled Egg by the way

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What their label says...

Do the Musiking' is an album curated and created by Big Eyes captain James Green, along with his co-pilot David Jaycock over the past 3 years. After the last Big Eyes album, 'We Have No Need for Voices...', they decided to call it a day with the 'group' dynamic, and plough their interests into experimenting with classical/folk arrangements and collaborating with artists they admire. The new album, under the moniker 'The Big Eyes Family Players', is a 29-track album, featuring contributions from numerous musical talents including James Yorkston, James William Hindle, Rachel Grimes (Rachel’s), Jeremy Barnes (A Hawk and A Hacksaw, Bablicon) and Suzy Mangion (George, and occasionally Piano Magic).

"This pool of talent allows the songs to really take-off and become fully realised, often taking on a classical persona, no more so than on 'Die Nacht' which is a gorgeous piece of music that makes you listen, and is followed by the brief but lovely 'Shanty For Darty'. An almost hallucinatory feel is conjured up by the drone-folk of 'A Dream Of Fires', which at 3 minutes 20 seconds is one of only three tracks to break the three minute barrier, meaning that the songs pass by like dreams half remembered, something which gives the album a magical feel, the sound of woodlands on a summer day" [The Ptolemaic Terrascope]

"With this 29 song/78 minute album it seems like Big Eyes - now The Big Eyes Family Players - set out to quietly astound and perhaps confound. An album so sprawling, it makes the Beatles 'White Album' sound downright cohesive; but it’s also got something else in common with that album - it’s almost all excellent. Woozy Gypsy laments for sleepwalkers, the perfect theme to a remake of The Third Man, an almost lo-fi gauzy indie-folk pop squeezing sunshine out of eternity through acts of melodic compassion. One track sorta reminds me of Alasdair Roberts. There are some of Cluster's miniature universe theories, and a moment or two reminiscent of Neu, icicle windchimes, and warm cool softspoken intimacy. Lots of old European sorrow, nocturnal jazz grooves, a dash of discordant angst, and some surrealistic lullabies slowly passing like elevated Fahey extrapolations meandering down a glacial riverbed. Some haunted hallucinatory personal folk songs, and an expansive sense of mystery, of something only partially revealed, perhaps glimpsed only in passing" [George Parsons, Dream Magazine]