L A N D - Night Within

The cavernous voice of David Sylvian sets the hushed, stretched-out atmosphere of "Nothing Is Happening Everywhere", the marvellous song that opens "Night Within", the album by two shadowy London producers, Daniel Lea and Matthew Waters, rechristened for the occasion as L A N D (yes, in capitals and with spaces between the letters).

Alongside Sylvian, the album features Daniel O'Sullivan (Miracle and Ulver) on piano, Alexander Tucker on mandolin, Duke Garwood (saxophone and clarinet), Paul Cook (drums), Matthew Cousins (bass), Tom Farmer (bass), Dom Garwood (clarinet), Jamie McCarthy (violin) and Richard Turner (trumpet).

To record "Night Within", Lea and Waters flew to Iceland, placing themselves in the capable hands of Ben Frost. The producer, already a collaborator of Björk and a protégé of Brian Eno, has crafted a kind of shoegaze-jazz, emphasising the melancholic accents of the horns and drums in the stereo mix. The musical impact, the structure of the tracks, the atmosphere and the overall conception of the record call to mind the masterpiece by Bark Psychosis, "Hex". As if twenty years had never passed, the two L A N D find themselves stirring together the elements that led Simon Reynolds to coin the term post-rock, trying to make the instruments of rock converse with the modes of jazz and the sonic carpets of ambient music.

"Into The Blue" recalls the narcoleptic guitars of slowcore, smearing them over a raw rhythm section and other grated guitars (like hearing Thurston Moore play a cover of Labradford). Further along the tracklist, "Cosmopolis" produces the same effect, drawing on Tortoise and the black-and-white Slowdive of "Pygmalion".

"Night Within" is inspired by the books of Paul Auster and by the nighttime drives of the protagonist of "Taxi Driver": worlds where thoughts are lit by neon while time begins to flow more slowly and emptiness fills with muffled sounds.

Garwood's saxophone on "Nighthawks" drifts through the nocturnal metropolitan space, painting vignettes worthy of a "Night on Earth" soundtrack. Time seems to stand still for a moment on the piano of the grand finale of "Cold Desire", before inexorably resuming a endless race. Toward nothingness.

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12/08/2012