New Corvid Variant

Well, hi there.  Now that Nightshift is back!  back!!  BACK!!! (as Neil Tennant used to say), there should be regular monthly reviews up here again.  Two things to note, unrelated to this review:

1) In addition I have an, err, extra "writing credit" for this issue, having come up with the headline Pandemic's People for an article about acts that formed or started promoting themselves during lockdowns.  I'm pleased to note that they are all too young to get this joke.

2) I now see that the odd reviews I put up since the last Nightshift, which were done on another device, have come out all funny.  I was going to change the formatting, but decided to leave it, as a memorial to the COVID era.

Stay safe.

SEBASTIAN REYNOLDS – CROWS (Faith & Industry)

Ever since he was a Nord-wielding nipper, Sebastian Reynolds has been adding keyboards and electronics to some of Oxford’s most adventurous bands.  The likes of The Evenings, Keyboard Choir and Flights of Helios tempered their sonic expansiveness with a wry wink, perhaps even bordering on cabaret, but in recent years Reynolds work under his own name has been a more mature and muted affair, though retaining the joy in revelling in a great sound.  This latest piece, split into two parts, might be his best work yet.

The prelude is built on an introspective, snaking clarinet line, which sounds like Movietone’s Rachel Brook trying to capture the diaphanous breathiness of a shakuhachi, and under which Greig Stewart’s steady, insistent drums progress incessantly, bidding the image of a deep thinker wrestling with a koan whilst staring from a slow train at a mist-wreathed landscape (if not the theme to a Buddhist Bergerac).  The track proper ups the tempo, leading a portamento party into an electrified cage, whilst an Underworld-like synth lasers semi-randomly around a root tone, in a fashion which recalls Dead Cities era FSOL.  Two remixes complete the package, Pradit Saengkrai turning the solid rhythm into an elastic-legged lope, whilst L’Etranger transmutes the melancholic mistiness into the sort of brash drama that could be a UFC champ’s walk-on fanfare.  Forget the feel-good hit of the summer, this sinuous serving of emotional atmospherics could be the feel-conflicted hit of the autumn.  Nights are drawing in, close the curtains and get this on your stereo.