Wreaths - Like Sparks From Throats Falling

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4...according to our Brian on Thu 27 May, 2010.

Today's big news is Under the Spire is 21! 21 releases old! This pro-mastered baby is a discette that begins with a big stately, ever-building drone & calming cosmic tones. Along the way we encounter a woozy Alexander Tucker-esque paganist instrumental and psychedelic industrialisms, meditative post-rock textures & shimmering guitar atmospherics amongst other popular contemporary minimalist styles. One to submerge your consciousness into via some quality headphones....Nice work! Mastered by the ever eager Ian Hawgood.

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Back in the day, before kids were allowed those evil laptop thingies to make music on, I carried round my battery operated 3-track tape recorder and recorded whatever I damn well pleased. Me and my mates would get some crappy instruments and just have all sorts of fun. There was a lovely directness about using a tape machine, namely that there was nothing you could do with the quality (or perceived lack thereof), you simply had to get the levels right. Then along came the digital age and kicked that in the balls with its sheen and fiddly pre-empting.

So is it the fact that Michael R. Donaldson (the man behind the Wreaths moniker) records everything on tape which makes his music so compelling? Well, no. Sure, it sure is nice to hear someone solely use a tape machine to record on, to hear that faithful old stop / start, the freckled hiss, the counter clicking and all sorts of mysterious little workings. But still, anyone can grab a tape recorder and say they are 'all analog' or something. What makes 'Like Sparks From Throats Falling' so special is the sheer youthful displays of soul (soulful displays of youth?) across it. It's a gorgeous yet wonderfully dirty, decayed work that simply wouldn't work nearly as well if it was made on anything other than a tape machine. Yet rather than use tape in some overly (and annoyingly) 'clever' processed way, Wreaths simply records on it, and that's that.

'Like Sparks From Throats Falling' is some sort of poetically beautiful, folksy, post-rocky, minimal and intense album. Yeah it's recorded on tape, but its not that which strikes me with those youthful memories. Its the voice inside that gorgeous dirge that really counts, and its a brave, honest and personal one. Its a voice which isn't concerned with technical elements or fiddling around too much, its the voice as it is in its purest and most undiluted form. In music, as in all art, I don't think you can really ask for anymore than that.

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