Walls - Coracle

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5...according to our Brian on Fri 23 Sep, 2011.

I don't know at what point Kompakt started to register as a seminal label with me but given that I once thought much of their output seemed drippy and bland the few years after the millennium I never began to think I may be caught in their web of swirling delights one day! Walls is a man machine numbering two and this is their second album. I cannot stop playing the bloody thing either. In much the same way The Field entices and hypnotizes with his gentle loops and itchy micro rhythms, this duo supply the listener with serene dreampop, kosmische soundworlds, pulsating downtempo techno and sweet enveloping soft noise. A lot of this style of music can be traced back to French pioneers M83 and the cuddly serenity of British neo-ambient poppers Nathan Fake, Julian Fane and James Holden. A genuinely lush melding of styles that takes bliss-out shoegazer noise and marries it with bobbing European "emo" house, gliding processed vocal hooks and Kraftwerkian pulses to create a kind of 5AM aural ecstasy. This is often strongly delirious music that could easily set a dancefloor alight even though it's so chilled out too. There's one track on here that's the perfect amalgamation of Fuck Buttons bristling cerebral erm...wall of motorik sound and Four Tet's organic glistening acoustics. 'Raw Umber/Twilight' is the ultimate Autumnbahn (??!!) tune for 2011. They even save the best for last with the emotive soothing arpeggios of 'Drunken Galleon', a track which invokes the spirit of Aphex Twin's most intimate, reflective forays. If you like the stuff on Border Community then this album has to be in your bag, it's simply that good. I'm going to have to cease with these terrible portmanteaus from now.

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* THE LAST 12 MONTHS HAS BEEN SOMETHING OF A WHIRLWIND FOR WALLS.
THEIR SELF-TITLED DEBUT ALBUM WON THE #1 SLOT ON MOJO'S 'ELECTRONICA ALBUMS OF THE YEAR' LISTING AND FEATURED IN NME'S BEST OF 2010 LIST TOO. BUT THAT WAS LAST YEAR....THIS YEAR ALL THEY HAVE TO CONTEND WITH IS A MASSIVE NORTH AMERICAN TOUR SUPPORTING BATTLES, AN APPEARANCE AT ATP'S NIGHTMARE BEFORE XMAS....AND NEW ALBUM 'CORACLE'..

* PRESS for 2010 debut album 'Walls' (KOMPAKT82CD)

** 1 in the NME Buzz Chart: "Think Panda Bear collaborating with Krautrock stalwart Hans-Joachim Roedelius, or Fuck Buttons with more emphasis on the foreplay."

* "Feeling as fresh as Boards Of Canada, cLOUDDEAD and Spiritualized did at their inceptions, this is the must-have OST for intronauts everywhere." NME - 9/10

* "Walls may borrow from My Bloody Valentine and ambient-era Aphex Twin but it's techniques the duo have gleaned from techno that really hold sway." MOJO - 4/5

* "Hypnotic, organic, and unlike much else out there, its a stunning debut." IDJ - 9/10

* "Walls have arrived and their loved-up melancholia is irresistible." CLASH

* NB initial pressing of LP will be WHITE vinyl, when they are gone, they are gone.

* WALLS’ Alessio Natalizia and Sam Willis don’t deal in perfect wholes. The Kompakt duo return swiftly on the back of 2010’s critically lauded self titled debut, an album that picked up Mojo’s coveted Electronic Album Of The Year, featured in NME’s end-of-year lists, not to mention winning fans such as of Jamie XX, Caribou, James Holden and impressing US trio Battles so much that they’ve invited the pair on tour around the US this coming October. Yet it isn’t these admittedly impressive accolades that make the announcement of second LP ‘Coracle’ such an anticipated one; what makes WALLS so alluring is the fully immersive experience of their mellifluous electronica – reaching out far and wide to pull influences sonic, emotional and theoretical together into patterns of blissful phantasmagoria.

* Taking their debut as the prototype, Willis and Natalizia have taken those initial early-sunrise evocations and pushed them to even more grandiose expanse. ‘Coracle’ also takes a more dance-orientated stance, the soft-edged rhythms of ambient combining with influences from the protean Detroit techno and Chicago house music of Juan Atkins, Mr Fingers et al to propel the likes of opener ‘Into Our Midst’ and lead-off single ‘Sunporch’ forth. Yet, as stated, WALLS don’t deal in perfect wholes; sonic shapes often collide in slow motion, whilst a greater usage of guitars and pedals – twisted to push the instruments beyond their comfort zone – have further cemented links to krautrock (Cluster / Popul Vuh) and shoegaze (MBV / Ulrich Schnauss). At times aural ideas bleed together, sometimes one pushing the other into the background, elsewhere combining to morph into something new.

* At times there is a wonderful sense of isolation amidst the vastness of their sound; a reflective space away from the ever accelerating tumult of modern life, soundscapes that wonder and explore, free of any pre-determined meaning or interpretation. Tracks like ‘Vacant’ and ‘Drunken Galleon’ glimmer with the sense of voyages not entirely known, the former shimmering and shaking as though ready for take off, the latter’s introductory keyboards tiptoeing naively, like an explorer feeling their way amidst freshly discovered surroundings.

* There’s no sense of a directed level at which we the listener should respond to their music, so long as we can connect with it on some emotion - indeed, for a group whose most obvious tools remain electronic machines and samplers, theirs is a sound that could hardly sound more human. This open ended approach, to allow the audience to complete the interpretation on their own is inspired by the ideas of German film director Werner Herzog -the track ‘Ecstatic Truth’ is named after his talk on the subject.
‘Coracle’ is cerebrally created music, but it’s a work that hasn’t been allowed to escape the more impulsive - and yet in many cases more complicated - spectrum of human emotion imbued in it first. It's an album that connects on the most satisfying and accessible level, as the pair say: “we learned to trust the goosebumps that we've both felt throughout making this record;” they won’t be alone in experiencing such spine-tingling reactions.