UK orders over £50 ship free!
...according to our Brian on Fri 04 Sep, 2009.
Solo Andata are from Australia and have apparently had their sounds featured on a Calvin Klein 'Obsession' commercial. Now, I know little about these pricey designer scents apart from the tasty aromas I secrete in my various bodily cavities that I doubt would appeal to 99.9% of the human race (but may attract the odd stray woodland creature or deviant ghetto dwelling clanger) This here self titled CD on 12K has 8 tracks of VERY fine darkish ambience, deliciously eerie & aquatic, like a field recording of a frog infested marsh in the middle of some humid wetlands with some tidy mournful chamber strings and hovering samples of a Gregorian chant variety. I like the murky technoid pulse too on this track, like John Carpenter chugging away on the horizon. Things continue in a dingy, watery vein throughout 'Hydraulic Fluctuations' flowing into a highly evocative melancholy drone piece that recalls Inca Ore & Grouper's spooked tones or Celer's more haunted moments. Further listening reveals that there's a nice balance on this CD between quality organic ambient textures, neo-classical/drifty post-rock touches & hazy drone/found sound - a work of considered diversity & considerable depth. Nice photo booklet too, seek it out!12k presents Australian duo Solo Andata along with their second album, self-titled. Translated literally from the Italian as “one way”, Solo Andata portrays the theme of a one-way journey that moves from (and represents a thread between) water and land, fluid/stasis, cold/hot. Following Solo Andata’s debut album Fyris Swan (Hefty, 2006) and their 12k inception on Live in Melbourne, Solo Andata presents us with an ambient affair, with dark drones coupled with ethereal sonic environments.
It could be said that Solo Andata is carefully sequenced to a narrative structure: beginning on boat in the cold, arctic night of “Ablation,” and then ending on foot in the hot wilderness of “Woods, Flesh, Bone.” However, concepts and narratives that seem clear to the artists are often left oblique to the listeners. This is perhaps why Solo Andata represented this narrative in a strict sense by recording what the titles literally refer to. For example, “Woods Flesh, Bone” presents us with sweltering woodlands, the sound of a fresh carcass being torn apart and the clattering of bones. The same can be said of “Hydraulic Fluctuations,” “Canal Rocks,” “Ablation” and “In the Light Storming.” These organic sources, then, help tie music and concept together.
Solo Andata utilizes very little, if any, electronic instruments. Acoustic guitar, piano, cello and the natural resonances of organic materials (usually by way of a violin bow, pluck, or home-made contraption) become their main instruments, and as their live shows often attest to, Solo Andata can turn almost any object into an instrument capable of producing beautiful, other-worldly music.
Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!
Norman Records,
Unit 20, Croydon House,
Croydon Street,
Leeds,
LS11 9RT, UK.
Tel/fax: (+44) 0113 245 4399
Email: phil@normanrecords.com
Follow us on Facebook
We want to be the best online record store in the UK, so please send us your ideas and feedback.
(We don't spam and we won't give your email address to anyone else. One email a week is all you'll ever get. Read our privacy policy.)
For payment and account functions on this site, all traffic is encrypted with SSL. Our SSL certificate is provided by Thawte: view our certificate.
This site is regularly audited for security problems by Netcraft. For more information please take a look at our Netcraft Security Seal.
We don't handle credit card details on this site. When it comes to taking your card payment we hand you straight over to eWAY - a secure, PCI DSS compliant payment gateway.
