Sound-wise, the vinyl is great too. All four of my LPs arrived without any visible dirt or damage and the surface noise on them was pretty low.
I'll go track-by-track on the stuff that wasn't in the abridged version. "It Can Happen Here" is a claustrophobic, portentously rising tone poem. On a loud, deep bass-reproducing sound system, it has the brain-frying quality of shutting yourself in a cupboard during a panic attack! This and "Trespasser" are the most ominous noise collages imaginable, with hardly a recognizable melody in the thick morass of sounds. This is the sort of thing they'd never usually put out for wide release, because it just feels so left-field... but it's also awesome.
Next is the closest thing to an "Adrift and At Peace" sequel that exists in their catalogue, and speaking of Still feels in "Still Feels" (sorry for making this dumb joke a second time), it occurs to me that the woodwind section that layers over top of the eerie piano ostinato in "Outside" is redolent of "The Persistence of Loss". That vinyl reissue of Still they were supposedly working on a couple of years ago would be a most welcome complement to this (oh, and let's have The Walled-Off Hotel complete score also, including a real-life player piano roll, please and thank-you)...
"Dreaming Forwards & Backwards" begins with a woozy, unsettling drone that slowly expands out of silence then twists and unfurls itself into a soaring and diving whine, while discordant bowed instruments moan and cry in the background. Again, quite amelodic at first, but there is a harmonic pulsation of bass that enters around three minutes in and it eventually resolves a progression I didn't even initially realize was happening. Very clever.
"Exposure" is another nasty, drone-y, screamingly full-of-dread number with no friendly topline melody aspects whatsoever, just blistering synth washes and throbbing, off-kilter backbeats that all of a sudden race themselves into a recognizable drum machine pattern, before burning out into a distorted husk just as suddenly and leaving the earth scorched in its wake with a mighty whirring-whooshing effect, and a low bass thud that trails off inconclusively. It's another seven-minute beast of nightmarishness.
"Further Outside" is a brief reprise of the opening ostinato piano theme, but with less of the slow build and decay in melody, and more of the creeping tension-mounting noises showcased throughout, in their own swooping climaxes and dimenuendi.
"Can't Seem to Wake Myself Up" is another rhythmically unsettled, noisy collage (it made me think of the "20 Ghosts III" noise fanfare, before the 'rock out' section takes over, or "I'm Not from This World" off Side Two of Bad Witch) but with a keyboard line that recedes into the dreamlike distance as various untethered stabs of drum or bass sputter out before the soundfield is dominated by textures of ping-pong stereo delayed synths that ring like alarm bells. It drops out and slides ungracefully into the loping, tap-dripping comedown of "Contagion A".
"Contagion B" has an insistent bass loop, more infinite-delay strings, and an alarm-bell cadence of clanging whines that spin out abruptly into the beautiful, quiet piano melody of "Last Thing Left". "Contagion C" does a similar trick, whipping up the frenzy of bass into a frantic pace with buzzing synths soaring high above. Love the driving tempo of this one, and the finale is like something out of a 1950s musique concrète track.
"So Much to See" reprises the bell-like synth chime ostinato and swooping horn blasts of "Careful What You Wish For", but with more frequent fits and starts over its short run time. "Incomplete Resolution" is a totally straight lullaby, played on what might be a sampled vibraphone. "Maybe This Is" reprises the recurring piano theme from "Looking Forwards & Backwards" but with an even more resigned, world-weary quality, leaving a haunted feeling that's the perfect space for having just witnessed the previous two hours of freakish mind-pictures that this soundtrack has conjured.
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Originally Posted by botley
