Play 90 second soundbite of 'The Truth Always Follows Me Around' @ 'CD quality'
Cleverly rotating between darkly haunting and evocatively chilled, Beaches Of The proud errs towards the likes of Sigur Ros and Godspeed You Black Emperor although BOTP tends to be less orchestratedly refined than either of those two; the Beaches Of The Proud sound is generally 'lighter' in form and a bit more spiky in terms of cohesion. I don't want to sound negative at all but, generally the tracks here, 'The Truth Always Follows Me Around', 'His Shell', 'River Of Us', 'Cursed By The City...' and '...Redeemed By A Ghost' tend to be under-achieving somewhere and end up sounding very 'one-man-band-ish'. Ok, but in reality, that's what Beaches Of The Proud is, digital wizard Dave Webster and his silicon arsenal of musical modernity - no more and no less! But, where Webster maybe just lacks a bit in depth and dynamic he more than makes up for in vision and belief. The works here are varied and, on the whole, very well thought out. Webster uses a persistently 'tinny' drum sound that, although often bordering on complimentary, is just as often a bit 'harsh'. But, with a few interesting time signatures and some pretty angular arrangements, Webster certainly keeps things fluid and 'testingly' interesting. With his multi-layered approach he takes you from crashing, crushing crescendo's to subtle, sensitive, serenity - music for the mind, music for the moment.
'The Truth Always Follows Me Around' by Beaches Of The Proud is a pretty good EP within its genre of electro post-rock. Thankfully, the 'chunes' never get too obtuse and generally retain direction which tends to make them, in the main, pretty accessible. Webster manages to stay loosely within his beloved post-rock ropes even though the overall feel here is one of 'bright optimism' rather than 'morbid surrender' and therefore much easier on the ear than many similarly targeted works out there - a mighty fine outing that shows guts, dedication and innovation.
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