Guitarists Neil Halstead & Lee Lavender join acclaimed HOO to create a synth and guitar heavy masterpiece with guests Jackie Oates & Farmer Dave Scher.
Producer-songwriter and organic gardener with a penchant for wah-wah, Nick Holton brings you the wide-screen, heartbreaking glory of HOO’s gothy toned second album “We Shall Never Speak”. A more song filled leap forward from debut “Centipede Wisdom’s” post-rock electro adventures.
Holton is a master builder of woozy dynamics, his songs unfurl with a mysterious, hooky logic all their own – this is cinematic and deeply emotive machine music. A glorious hybrid of electro, shoegaze, dubby ‘niceness’ and floating dream pop. The spooked, narcotic throb of opener “Ghost In You”. The pounding, chewy Kraut/Space rock of “Cranium”. The mighty’s exquisite slow build towards Can-like lift-off. Snarly hypnotic throb of first single ‘Still Dream’ pounds along like a wide-screen Spaceman 3. Its subject paints a picture of youthful arrogance veiled in a foil of anger & cowardliness, a loved one lost to an ocean of dark cold space. Moog battles with groovy bass while guitars try to take your head off. A brief flirt with musique concrète on the metronomic “No One Can See This”. The Halstead co-penned shoegazy, echoey swagger of “We Shall Never Speak”. The album’s poisoned chalice & peak song moment, “Powder Moon”. The synthpop of “You Changed The Way You Smile”. Closer “Sea Of Glass” sounds like Leonard Cohen visiting Kraftwerk’s Klingklang studio.
Let that sink in – the idea is perhaps the heart of this venture.
The detail and texture is extraordinary. A glorious hybrid of an album that over eight songs builds into something unique. Epic and homegrown. Upbeat and melancholic. Questing and questioning. Haunted by loss but future-facing. It’s a genuine marvel.
Releases November 19th, 2021
The Fat Angel Sings 