CAUGHT IN THE WAKE FOREVER - All The Hurt That Hinders Home

Half of the Scottish duo Small Town Boredom (two excellent albums to their name, steeped in endemic melancholy and catatonic low-fidelity melodies), Fraser McGowan has recently embarked on a solo path under the effective name Caught In The Wake Forever. Although, by his own account, still in an embryonic stage, the project already possesses an autonomous artistic dignity and a catalogue that, after a collaborative CD-R released on Hibernate, is now enriched by the five tracks gathered on the EP "All The Hurt That Hinders Home".

For now setting aside his hushed vocals, McGowan devotes himself to wholly instrumental compositions that replicate the slowness of his main band's cadences in the form of minimal guitar and piano chords, framed by warm electronic embraces, achieved through extensive manipulation and field recordings.

Muffled noise, crackles and drowsy guitar languor in delay open the work, following a very precise pattern of electronic iterations and shadings, left to its bare solitude in the opening “Recorded With You In Mind” and then gradually more structured in the following “Fragments Turn To Dust”. In “Mount Batten Ferry” the measured notes of the piano enter, framed by sizzling micro-sounds, in a formula that may bring Library Tapes to mind.

But the most interesting clues about the possible future developments of the Caught In The Wake Forever project come above all from the two closing tracks of the digital EP, where McGowan moves further away from the attitude (if not so much from the sound) of Small Town Boredom; “I Have Nothing Left To Give You Anymore” in fact pits piano and guitar against muffled rhythms and electric saturations culminating in the final distortion, while “For Those That Left Along The Way” decisively veers toward an ambient landscape studded with arpeggios, chirps and assorted electronic manipulations, which fades into hypnotic loops that grow ever slower and more narcoleptic.

Curious is the dual edition in which “All The Hurt That Hinders Home” was released: alongside the digital version there is a physical one, containing twice as many tracks, since the five pieces of the EP are subjected to pervasive manipulation by as many artists. Thus, “Recorded With You In Mind” is turned by Jon Atwood into a track of over ten minutes (more than double its original length), traversed by harsh and nostalgic electric reverberations that open into an elaborate crescendo, while David Wenngren stretches “Fragments Turn To Dust” into romantic mists closer to his Murralin Lane project than to Library Tapes, to which he is credited for the remix. There is also room for the Nordic mists of Icelandic artist Sketches For Albinos, for the skewed hoodian atmospheres of Jonnie Common, in his version of “I Have Nothing Left To Give You Anymore”, and for the bright, distant distortions of Fieldhead, who wraps “For Those That Left Along The Way” in further ambient-drone depths.

The variety of these reinterpretations is therefore further proof of the versatility of McGowan's compositions and of the promising seeds he has sown with the first evidence of his solitary artistic creature, which, at this point, seems sensible to await its first test on the album format, already announced for next year.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

28/08/2011