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Robin Guthrie
Continental
Rocket Girl
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Article
written by James G
Jun 23, 2006.
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I‘ll be honest with you, kids. Robin Guthrie is one of my guitar heroes. Not as in your typical guitar heroes, such as Hendrix, Clapton and all those dullards. No, I mean as in Vini Reilly, Maurice Deebank and Johnny Marr. And so I was hugely looking forward to hearing his second instrumental album, ‘Continental’. For those unfamiliar with his work…well, in essence, he is a master of the exploration of repetition, gentle discordance and suggestion.
The title track suggests explorations into the Earth’s core, whilst the bass does the hard work. ‘Conquering The Romantic’, full of typical Guthrie minor 7ths and melancholy, evokes lazy, sun-drenched Saturdays spent with intercourse and cigarettes. ‘Crescent’ is another epic, whilst ‘Monument’ is full of differing layers and textures that pull one into a world of endless reflection, luminosity and echoes, before a lead motif gives the listener a much needed scalp and neck massage. Aah, that’s better…
‘Amphora’ broods away nicely, and ‘The Day Star’ starts all Durutti Column circa ‘LC’, before a brutish rhythm section gang gatecrash the party, spilling cans of supermarket lager over the lounge carpet. In its refrain, ‘Radiance’ seems to say ‘someone should show me, should show me the light’. ‘As I Breathe’ is Claude Debussy with his foot on a delay pedal, ‘Last Exit’ a lesson in restraint, and ‘Pale’ rounds things off, starting with a seemingly abstract selection of phased and flanged feedback, before the guitar parts arrive and let us know that everyone here is in on the act. Praise should be forthcoming for the continuing avoidance of a vocalist. Whereas Elizabeth Fraser’s ‘Cocteauspeak’ was the perfect foil for Guthrie’s patterns, anyone else would surely just spoil things.
This is more than just background noise whilst spending time in a floatation tank. But it would work there just as well.
Untitled Document
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