Sunday 20 March 2016

Thomas W - Long is the Night (Myhand.thanx)

 
Thomas W's 17th release for the excellent Myhand.thanx net label has all the hallmarks that make all of his works such a consistent pleasure.  There's a semi-improvised element to what he does that allows Thomas W to slide from discordant to delicate and back again in a manner that's striking, and sometimes unsettling, yet entirely natural.
 
The song titles here give a clue to the personal notes struck in this new collection.  'Sisster', which I'm featuring in my Dandelion Radio show this month, offers early moments of easy fluency before 'Feather' (drop out the -e for a the clue) almost stalls into spoken word reflection as a guitar trembles in the background.
 
Yet such reflective tunes are bracketed between 'Intro' and 'Outro' tracks whose violently loose structures offer a sense of melodic collapse that's elsewhere only really hinted at.   It means that the harsh moodiness of a track like 'V' doesn't so much come out of the blue as bring elements into sharp relief that are elsewhere suppressed.
 
I've never heard anything from Thomas W that didn't fascinate me on at least one level.  This one manages to do so on many.  Long is the Night is the work of an artist at his most honest and intimate and as such it's an excellent introduction into his intoxicating musical world.   Get it for free here.


 

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