HOME

REVIEWS

SoundsXP Presents

Next show:

BAD FRIDAY!
Peluché,
Dead Coast,
Les Sueques,
Calva Louise,
Flights of Helios,
Videocean,
Dirty Blondes
+ SoundsXP DJs

The Windmill, Brixton
Good Friday, 14th April 2017
3pm till late

Buy tickets here

On Our iPod

Latest Forum Posts

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Album Review

Flying Cape Experience
We're All Gonna Die El Vals del Conejo

Article written by Kev W - Jul 7, 2015

Twenty years ago it would be difficult to believe that the internet would have opened up so many doors and made so many connections, but, as with début 'Let's Sing More About The Eyes', Finnish husband and wife duo Flying Cape Experience are releasing their second LP through Peruvian/Portuguese net label El Vals del Conejo (a limited physical release is also available). 'We're All Gonna Die' might not be the most cheery of titles, but it's a fact, and it also belies the sheer beauty of these songs which throw bucket-loads of atmosphere out of the speakers. You'd perhaps expect this from a record based around the themes of "life, love, death, the question of 'would something be so precious to us if we wouldn't face letting go of it sooner or later'."

This is perhaps best characterised by the glorious 'Death Waltz'. This isn't some morbid misery-fest, it's closer to a celebration. Beginning with the album's title as its opening line, it goes on to say "death makes me love life" to the kind of ambience that wouldn't be out of place on a Mazzy Star record, and then an uplifting dream sequence adds extra beauty and optimism. There are plenty of experimental sections too: call it prog, call it psychedelia, call it post-rock; it's probably a bit of each, all with the flash of fairground music playing in the background. Flying Cape Experience don't really do verse-chorus-verse style pop songs.

The subtle build of opener 'Take Us Away' leads to feedback and swells into layers of sound that smother the haunted vocals; it's expansive and claustrophobic all at once. Perhaps more accessible is the nicely strummed dreampop of 'Always', although the effects still make it sound quite fantastical and again those layers pile up to make quite a noise. 'The Healer' is more mellow (not that the rest is especially raucous) and feels like a mid-album reflection on loneliness, but it's still a thing of beauty. Despite the clear influence of post-rock, you can't help but keep recalling Mazzy Star, and perhaps never more so than on the picked intro to 'Sa(i)d and Done', although it does transform itself into a mild cacophony at points (if that's not an oxymoron...). It should come as no surprise that closer 'I Have A Dream' is a quiet, brooding epic that's smothered in echo and laced with distortion. It makes for a fitting finale. 'We're All Gonna Die' may not blow you away on first listen, but stick with it and you'll reap the rewards; it's all killer.

Links:
https://www.facebook.com/FlyingCapeExperience
https://elvalsdelconejo.bandcamp.com/album/were-all-gonna-die
https://www.facebook.com/ElValsdelConejo