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LP
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DIGI 016LP
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Coasts has been a long time in the making. John Twells (aka Xela) and Matt Christensen (of Zelienople) have been collaborating in various forms for years, but this is their first fully-realized work. The entire album was made with vintage gear and recorded to 8-track during a weekend in Chicago in 2008 and finally mixed at Twells' Seventh Door Studio outside Boston. The resulting record is a spectral odyssey in two parts. Darkened passages shift and fall apart while keeping the piercing sun at bay. Faint song structures lurk beneath the rolling black waves, but only get an arm above the surface during those rare moments of light. Opening with "The Crate," immediately you are immersed inside the belly of the whale as Twells' siren call gets trapped beneath Christensen's bleak guitar notes. It all feels held together by the thinnest of threads. Rattling tones crawl out from underneath swirls of electronics, like barely-there points of reference in a white-out. Lines are crossed but blur together and everything ends up sounding like a desperate, beautiful collage of sound. It's all a ruse, anyway, as you are tricked into a sense of calm as the dying orchestral zones gently flame out. "Burning Bridges Together" is your reward for buying in. Crunching guitar chords bowl into you at full-force, moving slow but piling on the pressure. Christensen belts out the vocals this go-round, getting buried underneath endless washes of fuzz-soaked cacaphony. Tension rises to the point of no return as they desperately search for a breaking point. Things finally settle down and gently fade into oblivion, Christensen's guitar providing the final epitaph. In the end, the seamless nature of the collaboration is what really leaves its mark.
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