electric assembly

reviews

July 2009

Electric Assembly ‘White Splinter - EP2’ (dream driven recordings). Alas we’ve tried as hard as we can to get information gathered together about this lot but have so far drawn a blank (other than for the fact that they are based in London) given that their my space page only seems to want to load the showcase music player and little all else besides. Anyhow Steve from the band sent over this their forthcoming release ‘White Splinter - EP2’ (which by powers of deduction alerts us to the fact that out in record world there must be a previous release - no shit Sherlock). Anyhow a tasty looking thing it is featuring four tracks all housed in a hand made crafted spray painted gatefold sleeve and all strictly limited to just 100 numbered copies of which ours - in case you are taking notes - is #47. A bit of a belter we don’t mind admitting, as said featuring four tracks and opening with ’descent pattern’. bugger me if this doesn’t mooch and stalk with a knowing brooding post rock / post punk menace as though its just broken free from the intense claustrophobia of the grooves nailing Left Hand’s criminally neglected ’minus 8’ set to the wax. Easily filed under the ‘edgily intense and austere in design - a half way house in some respects between a youthful Playrights and Mountain’ section of your record collection - yep that good though quite frankly no way hinting at what’s to come. ’11.43’ is a colossus that frankly transcends the epic tag. We here are assuming the title refers to a frozen point in time and certainly not the duration of the cut which extends to just over 19 minutes in length. A pristinely honed slice of glacial sculpturing, all t once mellow and detached yet forlornly set in an inescapable bitter sweet ache of faded hope. A gorgeously opining gem of sun bleached effects pedal laden bliss out groove - a mind melting feedback utopia that imagines the beauty of Workhouse in full flight, the mite of San Lorenzo and the expressive epiphanies of early career Ride and Catherine Wheel. A beautified melodic mosaic dappled and drizzled amid corteges of haze driven shimmering cloud parting arpeggios all burning with a death driven intensity, the track itself slowly evolving from a lull like cantering trade winds navigating sky bound across endless green belts of landscape slowly evolving into some stratospheric and spectral before achieving maximum overdrive at roughly 11 minutes in wherein the criss-crossing opining caresses melt into each other creating a beautifully consuming kaleidoscopic dream weave of feedback ruptures and raptures. Immensely hypnotic and intoxicating stuff. That said our personal pick of the quartet is ’broken’. minimalist, fragile and majestic this hollowed honey hovers tempting wrapped in a deeply alluring hymnal hue all the time the hovering hum of single toned electronic swathes and the delicately weave of a daintily tendered unfurling guitar riff gently combine to carve out a reverential aura that takes to its core elements of the Teardrop Explodes ’tiny children’, Lou Reed’s ’a perfect day’ and dashes them with the crestfallen glaze of Decoration. An absolute numbing gem all told. ’wipe the sun off your shoes’ wraps up the set, a trembling tear drawn post rock fused kraut lunar module embarking on a distant mission, builds in stature, focus and velocity all the time concocting an impenetrable wall of feedback laced sound which once departed leaves you feeling somewhat deflated, lost and longing for more. Not a dry eye in the place I can tell you why Club AC30 et al haven‘t as yet picked up on its charms is a tad concerning mystery.

by Mark at Losing Today

http://www.losingtoday.com/tales.php?id=285

blogs.myspace.com/thesundayexperience

April 2007

Spaced Out! YourSpace! - Best of Myspace Music - Monthly Roundup April 2007

Electric Assembly- "Psychedelic/Experimental/Shoegaze" – London
Total Plays: 4919 Member Since: 20/01/2006 No. of Friends: 296 Bestest Track: Colours Change

Kind of comments: "The EP is wonderful. It shimmers. What can I say. Emotions in sound" and “I just found the tomato in my coat, took me a while to figure that one out...it survived somehow!”....

A shimmering smorgasbord of envelope-teasing shoe-glaze bliss, like floating on a magic carpet as the embers of an evening sky fade to black, and encouragingly consistent across the board. The sound of Galaxie 500 bumping around in Thurston Moore’s wonky mind. http://www.myspace.com/electricassembly

from Crud Music Magazine

March 4th 2007

Electric Assembly - Eyes On The Wall EP (Dream Driven Recordings)

This is a release custom-built for those idealistic moments you tell yourself you've had loads of. When you've stumbled home at a rather ridiculous hour from a ridiculous place and you need something akin to Mogwai playing the Beach Boys back catalogue to soothe your seethes away. These times are rare, though, aren't they? You probably only had them when you were a student.

The fact remains that Electric Assembly are exactly the band you need at such a moment as the one just described. They are exactly the band for many other situations as well, but that's something you can find out for yourself when you inevitably buy this record. The joy of it is in the restraint shown (ignore the fact that it takes a good 50 minutes to get through four tracks...), the fashion in which we are led by the hand into the songs' narratives and then shut in while weird things are done to us. 'Can Care Be Wrong' is creamy as pie, a truly enveloping listen. The wah-histrionics could have gotten in the way terribly, but in the hands of Electric Assembly they are merely a candied add-on to an already wooze-laden taste of perfection.

Other tracks stride past in a space of time seemingly much shorter than their monster length. Melodies colide with improvised guitar wizardry that Ira Kaplan wouldn't mind battering out of an evening, coalescing and forming somthing rather new and nice. The marathon of 'Pylons' is particularly far out, as wide as it is hugely long and thoroughly satisfying. It all helps create the kind of milieu that Galaxie 500 would have made if they were hanging out with EITS on a particularly dark and warm night. In short, rounded, intriguing, inviting, toasted and perfectly capable of inducing bliss on all who listen.

Go to this here to hear some noise and buy the record!

by DanielR

from popmusicology.com

September 2006

Electric Assembly's 'Can Care Be Wrong' is a lush instrumental with lightly touched acoustica offset by woozy lead and proggy wah-pedals strewn about like toys on a lawn, sounding possessed by the ghost of Kevin Shields. If he were dead, obviously. When, at about five minutes in, the jangle-factor is turned to the max and some punishingly effective guitar layers start to muscle in, it's like a summit being reached, an enemy smited. And we're left to dangle after it dies, dangling only by some weird accordion and that continuous wooze. The following 'Slow String Salute' is similarly downward-facing, but this time with the ethereal elegance of Explosions in the Sky, or the frosty emotions laced all through Slowdive. It is a simple, simple evolution that gestates throughout the piece, one of subtle layers and ever-expanding accompaniment. The plaintive guitar phrases are placed, nugget-like, next to one another whilst this massive surge takes place, creating an atmosphere of calm advancement. Surely, it must be hell for a band to build quite so slowly, to ache for the climaxes as much as Electric Assembly do. But when they are reached, it becomes clear why they wait. If the results were given to us straight away, it means nothing. If we work for it, the satisfaction is extrapolated ten-fold. Thank goodness Electric Assembly understand that a great deal more than most instrumental ensembles

by DanielR

from popmusicology.com

Live: electric assembly + Empty + Silver Springs

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Headliners electric assembly are the epitome of antithesis. Grateful are we for their musical stance; one which is defiantly at odds with anything around these days. EA are proof beautiful that you don't need noize or pesky pop hooks to reel people in.

Instead, they fascinate. They weave warm webs of sound that are spa(c)ial wonderments. They may lack the shape-splashing visuals that propped them up on a recent spate of gigs, but truly the music itself inspires your mind's eye to work away.

This is thoughtful music. Or is it drug music? We're certainly led on another plane.

'Colours change / no one can explain', sings frontman and guitar pedal-pusher extraordinaire David McHugh, and the room is verily vibrant with kaleidoscopic delight.

Not the most typically Christmassy of events, save for the presence of mince pies and tinsel, yet still an enjoyably impressive night.

The Bull and Gate has provided the crucial stepping stone to establishment and also the gateway to solid indie success for many an act, from Blur, to the Manics and Suede, so who knows what lies ahead for electric assembly...

by Fliss Collier

from Metro Online

Electric Assembly at Camden Dublin Castle, 10 April 2005

Sometimes you stumble across astounding musical splendour via pure serendipity. In April a quiet nothing doing Sunday evening in London’s cavernous Camden Dublin Castle was lit up with the glistening strains of Electric Assembly. Outstripping the band above them (they got the bigger crowd), they induced the tiny but converted gathering of gig-goers into one whole awe-filled reverie. We could have been floating in the sky on a perfectly cloudless summer’s day or we could have been happily high on the best drugs ever. Close our eyes and it felt as though Spacemen 3, Galaxie 500 and Mogwai were all having the greatest jamming session in the world on stage before us.

The most incredulous thing is, Electric Assembly have performed barely a handful of gigs. Sure, they honed their sound in their previous incarnation as The Vertical Smile ), but still, this makes them all the more astoundingly good.

Their debut EP is out this month (June) and is obtainable via www.dreamdriven.com. It is a work of thoughtful, wah-infused, sparkling loveliness. Lead track ‘Can Care be Wrong’ is an acoustic, melodic-addled beauty, resplendent with sweet lost indie boy lyrics like ‘by you / I need to be / adored’.

Electric Assembly songs often meander lengthily, but in the most heart-wrenchingly pretty way. Effects pedals echo and resonate to perfection, deep into the twilight night. They make you sigh and drift away…

Review by Miss Fliss

from www.splintermag.com web exclusives - livewire section

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