Watkins Group - Beanntan a’ Bhròin
- 1Am Fear Liath Mòr
- 2An Teàrnadh
- 3Biasd Bealach Odail
- 4Cait Sith
- 5Caoineag
- 6Sluagh na marbh
FCTAPES#1
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Open edition
Boomkat review:
Ghoulish Gaelic spirits are high on the striking dark ambient debut of a Scottish mainstay with an hour of soundtrack like spectral sorcery for fans of Deathprod, Lustmord, Mica Levi.
Known in a previous incarnation as half of “Crust House vagrants” Watkins & Almadovar, whose 1st 12” was a big one around our way, Watkins Group regenerates as a sort of atmospheric psychopomp or medium voicing the spirits and creatures that lurk in Scottish mythology and the “crags, gullies & glens of old Caledonia.”
Under a title inspired by Nan Shepherd’s poetic memoirs on hill walking in the Cairngorms (‘The Living Mountain’) Watkins Group proceed to emulate and manifest those classic ideals of electronic soundscapes - nature, the imagination’s netherworld - with a superb grasp of his subject in durational works that give all the time needed to mire the mind in its richly layered, evocative synth shadowplay and rugged physicality thats gives shape, hair, texture and teeth to his apparitions.
Sustained, keening, reverberating drones wracked with wheezing folk melody stretch out as far as the eye can see in low light on ‘Am Fear Liath Mar’, setting the tone for passages of barren, cavernous dark ambient slithering with hallucinatory figures on ‘An teörnadh’ and the phantasmic shimmers of ‘Biasd Beach Odail’, to a standout fireside séance of spectres in ‘Caoineag’ and the mind bog burial of ‘Sluagh na marbh.’
Ghoulish Gaelic spirits are high on the striking dark ambient debut of a Scottish mainstay with an hour of soundtrack like spectral sorcery for fans of Deathprod, Lustmord, Mica Levi.
Known in a previous incarnation as half of “Crust House vagrants” Watkins & Almadovar, whose 1st 12” was a big one around our way, Watkins Group regenerates as a sort of atmospheric psychopomp or medium voicing the spirits and creatures that lurk in Scottish mythology and the “crags, gullies & glens of old Caledonia.”
Under a title inspired by Nan Shepherd’s poetic memoirs on hill walking in the Cairngorms (‘The Living Mountain’) Watkins Group proceed to emulate and manifest those classic ideals of electronic soundscapes - nature, the imagination’s netherworld - with a superb grasp of his subject in durational works that give all the time needed to mire the mind in its richly layered, evocative synth shadowplay and rugged physicality thats gives shape, hair, texture and teeth to his apparitions.
Sustained, keening, reverberating drones wracked with wheezing folk melody stretch out as far as the eye can see in low light on ‘Am Fear Liath Mar’, setting the tone for passages of barren, cavernous dark ambient slithering with hallucinatory figures on ‘An teörnadh’ and the phantasmic shimmers of ‘Biasd Beach Odail’, to a standout fireside séance of spectres in ‘Caoineag’ and the mind bog burial of ‘Sluagh na marbh.’
