Dakota Suite - The End of Trying

Dakota Suite have been around a while but The End of Trying is the first time I've actually heard them and I'm super impressed. I kind of thought from the name they'd be like Gomez or Calexico or something, music for people who wear brown cords, but they're actually almost totally neoclassical. Phil's just informed me that the guy behind these is a massive Harold Budd fan and that comes through loud and clear in these melancholisms, generally as mournful and slow-moving as the title suggests. There's a really lovely restraint to the whole thing, the feeding in and out of weeping strings are the only real orchestration added to the predominant piano, played very deliberately and with notes generally given time to fully decay for maximum sighs. Very, very nice.