Natural Snow Buildings - Waves of the Random Sea

Woohoo!! Medhi & Solange are back with a brand new album! 'Waves Of The Random Sea' is their 1st physical release since the magnificent Shadow Kingdom (Norman album of the week in Sept 2009). BUT the Centauri Agent did come out as a free MP3 download in between which I've got but always forget to listen to as I can't see it when I look through my records. I'm a bit rubbish with MP3's. Anyway if you're not familiar with these guys then now is as good a time as any to get to hear them. They essentially make a unique style of Gaelic folk and drone mixed together into long sprawling opuses which take you to special places. Thier releases are often very long, the last album was a triple LP/ 2CD set, before that was Daughter Of Darkness which was spread over 5 full length cassettes, and then there's the countless ludicrously limited CDR's and cassettes which have come out over the years which all go for at least a million pounds each. Over the album you get 6 reasonably long tracks which when listened to as God intended will take you to a mystical place, far far away. I heard it for the 1st time yesterday stuck in traffic on the M1 and it made the whole situation completely bearable. The way the more folky segments blend with the intense droney pieces (usually constructed from cello, harmonica etc) is stunning. There's a real medieval feel to the proceedings as well, especially when the percussion kicks in towards the end of 'Through Breaches'. Sporadically the more folky elements will appear with Medhi's amazingly high voice and then before you know it you'll be thrusted back into some celestial sounding drone music. From start to end this is a great record and one you need to get as it serves as a great continuation from The Shadow Kingdom! NB: the tracklistings are different for both formats so there's one extra track on each format which ain't on the other (because it wouldn't all fit on the LP as it was intended!) Awesome!!