The Declining Winter - Scenes From The Back Bedroom Window

Bloody thing. 3" sod. We nearly forgot it. There's a man we know, an angry redhead type, who would be kicking us all around Armley if we let this one slip through the cracks. And believe me, our cracks are enormous. This is one of those dinky things on Little Super Secret Furry Vole or summat. Italian it is. Like yer Dad's loafers. The band in question are The Declining Winter. Heard of 'em? Nah. Me neither ;0] They are very good though. Apparently this sees them leaning in a slightly different direction. The first track, a reworking of an old Winter North Atlantic remix Richard's brother Chris did, under his Bracken alias, is utterly mint. A warm, ponderous, yet sad, organ line - simple as you like - overlaid with the kind of decaying, spectral vocal manipulation Grouper may endorse. But this isn't a Liz Harris clone at all. 'Leave' is really quite unnerving & beautiful in it's haunting bleakness. 'Killer', meanwhile, takes the sound of brushed acoustic guitars, cavernous atmospherics, ghostly vocals & what sounds like a looped & processed dulcimer and mashes it all into a wispy chamber piece that sounds almost amorphous. Truly remarkable. There's a 'version' of Nobody Else that is a wispy sketch of an acoustic piece and the finale is another fragile, longing acoustic lament. A nice treat for the Hood & associated collectors I reckon. Everything else on this label lasts a matter of days so don't piddle around children....there's 300 of these then it's done.