Red Sparowes

At the Soundless Dawn (Neurot)
By Craig Regala

Much like the plaintive beauty of Jesu, At the Soundless of Dawn moves with an expansive melodicism reminiscent of turn-of-the-’80s Cure, various shoegazer units, Spacemen 3, early ’70s Pink Floyd, drone/ambient music, or Dead Meadow. Some of this stuff could even be the “non-pop” underpinnings of Radiohead or Explosions In The Sky. You could drop bits of this into NIN’s The Fragile without altering its flow one bit. I say this before I tell you a couple of the members are in Isis, and the others have ties to Neurosis, Halifax Pier, and Cignal.

This is the gorgeous chill-out flip of aggro-pummel; similar in effect to the languid beauty Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue has after an evening of hard-charging Bebop. All is not quiet – actually most is not quiet – just restrained, an echo of loud, almost like My Bloody Valentine’s Glider, Poem Rocket’s Explosion ex Cathedra, or Cul De Sac’s Death Kit Train, or heck, the emotional impact of Popovuh’s movie soundtracks, Michael Hedges’ Aerial Boundries, Markus Stockhausen’s Cosi Lontanno… or Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Crystallisatio. Music as music made for emotional impact outside of pop configurations.
(www.neurotrecordings.com)