Thing of the Day
Tremors album from October All Over man....
February 28th 2011
TREMORS – Tremors (FullMoonSeason) –
Got very little information here, a blank CDr with not a thing
written on it. The disc arrived in the post wrapped in a colour cover
with very little info, just six track titles, an e.mail
address, a crude drawing of a cat on the front (rather like the cat
on the front) and some kind of mysterious Christ-like / Indian-guru
figure with pink hair on the back. The short hand-written note just
reads “Hi there, please find enclosed for possible review, the
debut full length from London based band Tremors, thanks! Graham
Bywater (October All Over, Forest)”. That’s all we have to go on
m’lud. We like what we hear though - something good happening here,
we need to know more.
Now if he hadn’t said “London based band” in that note then we’d be suspecting that Tremors was Graham’s solo studio project, rather than the work of a “London based band"…
The album starts off with a very
atmospheric track called Midnight Sun, all tribal drumming and gentle
wind synth swirls, chiming guitar, all very mellow and relaxed –
and that’s pretty much where we stay for the whole album – well,
not so much of the tribal drum patterns after the open track, plenty
more gentle synths, warm Krautrock flavours, restrained rides along
the Autobahn, relaxing tangerine dreams, uncluttered percussion, the
occasional spoken word, pieces of film sampled and woven in without
being too
intrusive. Transylvania is a refined piece of
strummed guitar and atmospheric minimalism - delicate keyboards
adding the fine details, a slightly different sound track, different
textures with that acoustic-sounding guitar, gives things an extra
dynamic while the synths and electronic textures are busy leading the
feel of the other tracks. The whole album is a relaxing, mellow,
cleansing full-bodied radiant affair, and all done in a far less
obvious, far more imaginative way than most of these kind of things
are – but then October All Over always did have something a little
special; you’d kind of expect this kind of quality from anyone
involved in that rather fine band.
Ah, now you see - I was right: a bit of online surfing to track down a contact for you and found that “all instruments played by Graham Bywater and recorded/mixed at home on the old eight track around Christmas 2010. Guest starring Lisa Bird, who contributed piano to Transylvania and Ominous Frost”. Seems Graham sees this as film soundtrack music rather than a live band, that makes sense… wouldn’t mind seeing and hearing this performed live in the right place though…. Extremely enjoyable impressive album
Find out more via… www.facebook.com/pages/Tremors/127348390670127?sk=info
