Ensemble Economique: At the Foot of Nameless Roads
Digitalis Industries (DIGI053)
Ensemble Economique is a solo project of California-based Brian Pyle who also plays in bands Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings. At the Foot of Nameless Roads is his first solo album and includes eight tracks some of which are long and some short. The album is started with the very monotonic and minimal, almost 11-minute-long title track and with the following track ”Mud Banks Shine in Broken Shardsin” these give you an impression that this album is filled with just peaceful drone. Wrong, since next we get to hear some shamanistic rhythms when ”Light Reflects as Seaguls Dive” takes us into a bit joujouka-like atmospheres for a while. The lengthy ”In Each Cracked Shell There Is Restless Time” is again cold, small-scale and somehow glassy ambient. The album’s shortest piece is the one-and-a-half-minute long ”In a Weightless Night” that has some rhythm again. ”Your Dream Was Mine” is more intense, buzzing drone that even gets close to noise. ”Everything Fragmented” is a psychedelic and experimental piece that has a clear rhythm once again. The last track “Fire” is another more peaceful drone including sounds of fire but also bits of atonal melody. The variation between the long drones and shorter, rhythmical pieces works fine and makes this album a bit easier to listen to. Although if you ask me, the tracks with some rhythm could have been the longer ones and not the other way around… 100 copies of this album came with a bonus disc but I didn’t get this one. There is one so far unreleased song on the Ensemble Economique MySpace site called ”Screaming Kinematic” and to me it sounds much more interesting (=psychedelic) than this album, so let’s what we’ll get next.
Ensemble Economique is a solo project of California-based Brian Pyle who also plays in bands Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings. At the Foot of Nameless Roads is his first solo album and includes eight tracks some of which are long and some short. The album is started with the very monotonic and minimal, almost 11-minute-long title track and with the following track ”Mud Banks Shine in Broken Shardsin” these give you an impression that this album is filled with just peaceful drone. Wrong, since next we get to hear some shamanistic rhythms when ”Light Reflects as Seaguls Dive” takes us into a bit joujouka-like atmospheres for a while. The lengthy ”In Each Cracked Shell There Is Restless Time” is again cold, small-scale and somehow glassy ambient. The album’s shortest piece is the one-and-a-half-minute long ”In a Weightless Night” that has some rhythm again. ”Your Dream Was Mine” is more intense, buzzing drone that even gets close to noise. ”Everything Fragmented” is a psychedelic and experimental piece that has a clear rhythm once again. The last track “Fire” is another more peaceful drone including sounds of fire but also bits of atonal melody. The variation between the long drones and shorter, rhythmical pieces works fine and makes this album a bit easier to listen to. Although if you ask me, the tracks with some rhythm could have been the longer ones and not the other way around… 100 copies of this album came with a bonus disc but I didn’t get this one. There is one so far unreleased song on the Ensemble Economique MySpace site called ”Screaming Kinematic” and to me it sounds much more interesting (=psychedelic) than this album, so let’s what we’ll get next.
