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Following a four-year-long absence since their ‘By The Roads and The Fields’ album, we are happy to announce the return of Bristol-based Crescent, whose fifth album, Little Waves is released on FatCat today in UK and Europe on CD and vinyl. The USA release date is 18 September. Slowly given form over the past few years, ‘Little Waves’ is a quiet, eccentric, and charmingly rough-edged record, influenced by 1960's psych / folk, and 1930's gramophone records. A set of largely acoustic songwriting and improvisations for guitar, worn-out voice, horns, organ, (home-made) double bass, and drums, it was recorded at home, in a cinema, and in a forest, and recalls the likes of Galaxie 500, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Bill Wells, and The Pastels.
Far from prolific, Crescent’s 14-year existence has taken place outside of the hype of transitory musical fashions and has seen them doing very much their own thing in their own sweet time. Emerging from the close-knit and highly fertile Bristol post-rock scene of the early- ‘90s that also included Flying Saucer Attack, Movietone, Foehn and Third Eye Foundation, the band is currently a six-piece with occassional outside contributors, and includes members of Movietone. Whilst Crescent started out as a ragged, occassionally explosive, lo-fi punk-inspired outfit, ‘Little Waves’ continues the trend of the last couple of albums in radically reducing the pace and the rage. Low-key and intimate, it richly rewards close listening, slowly surrendering its secrets.
Crescent take a warm, honest approach to recording, openly admitting environmental noise, human errors and idiosyncracies. Half of this album was again recorded in the band’s home, whilst one track was recorded in an ageing arthouse cinema, another out in the woods, and one on an abandonned railway line beneath a motorway flyover.
Band leader Matt Jones’ world-view is seemingly at odds with the increasingly-pervasive modern cultural landscape of instant gratification, obsessive cleanliness, speed, shrinkage and virtuality. With a grainy vocal delivery and skillfully descriptive lyrics, the album creates a intricate, shifting web of impressions. In touch with nature and the elements, it describes a dog-eared, highly tactile reality where ageing and processes of decay are accepted and welcomed rather than obsessively fought off and cleansed. Fragile, at times threatening to collapse or drift apart, ‘Little Waves’ is sedimentary and subtly-layered, an album rich in tiny, textural details - from the clatter and clutter of a tape delay, to acoustic guitar picking that at times sounds like the indeterminant patter of rain falling from a drainpipe, or the speeding up gamelan rhythms of ‘Drift’.
(Quelle: Fat Cat Records)
FORMAT: CD
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