BOATS - Ballads Of The Research Department

Born as one of the many side projects of the multifaceted Craig Tattersall (Hood and The Remote Viewer are on his CV), The Boats has actually revealed itself in recent times to be his most cherished and sought-after alias: four albums in four years, growing attention from genre aficionados, and a recent landing at 12k (a label going through an interesting evolution, seeking paths "other" than the electronic music that made it famous – but that's another story).

"Ballads Of The Research Department" is a new, courageous step forward, in search of a definitive and personal form: four suites that attempt to combine ambient abstractions, vividly coloured neoclassical tableaux, and brief post-rock-scented flights, trying to bring soul and sweetness to the aseptic nocturnal environment of a scientific department, from which the project draws its inspiration.

It opens amid the golden drones of "The Ballad For Achievement", a delightful game of ascents and free falls, straight from the galaxies to the half-closed blinds of one's own studio, not too far from the Icelandic music boxes of the earliest Múm. The opening moments of "The Ballad Of Failure", with vocals by Chris Stewart, inevitably recall the emotional, deeply intimate arpeggios of Bark Psychosis, but they soon veer away from song form to regress into a sprawling ambient backdrop, whitened by a thin layer of sleet. "The Ballad For The Girl On The Moon" is then a minimalist vignette made of a few fading, basinskian piano notes, dragged elsewhere by Danny Norbury's sweetest cello, toward a most languid winter landscape, shaken only at the close by Tattersall's soft sampled drums.

The fourth and final piece is finally "The Ballad Of Indecision": Cuushe's gentle vocalizations over a glitch backdrop wrap around you warm as a blanket, before gathering into a melancholy chamber serenade, in which we bask until nearly touching the twelve-minute mark.

It's hard to say whether "Ballads Of The Research Department" truly succeeds in bringing a soul to the bleak research department, but Tattersall and co. have certainly crafted one of those albums capable of soothing and bringing stillness, developing a different, intimate and warm take on ambient music.

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10/02/2012