Red Sparowes

At The Soundless Dawn

  1. Alone and unaware, the landscape was transformed in front of our eyes.
  2. Buildings began to stretch wide across the sky, and the air filled with a reddish glow.
  3. The soundless dawn came alive as cities began to mark the horizon.
  4. Mechanical sounds cascaded through the city walls and everyone reveled in their ignorance.
  5. A brief moment of clarity broke through the deafening hum, but it was too late.
  6. Our happiest days slowly began to turn into dust.
  7. The sixth extinction crept up slowly, like sunlight through the shutters, as we looked back in regret.
cover: NEU35

CD Release Date: 21 Feb 2005

At the Soundless Dawn (an album of seven compositions with titles that fit together as a complete paragraph) opens with a rapidly strummed single high−string building tension as distant, delay drenched notes saturate an almost dance−beat drum pattern on ‘Alone and unaware, the landscape was transformed in front of our eyes’ pedal steel notes add a further layer of glissando urgency as ringing guitar notes climb hand−over−fist upon an ascending line. The second track, ‘Buildings began to stretch wide across the sky and the air filled with a reddish glow’ kicks in abruptly, sounding reminiscent of the taut and eerie blasts of Italian horror film soundtrack masters Goblin. Icy, piercing guitars jut out from the speakers as rapid bass arpeggios drive the tune ever nearer. Comparisons to the more lulling and lush tunes from the My Bloody Valentine masterpiece Loveless would not be off the mark for the third track (a beautifully constructed four−and−a−half minute piece of gorgeous, somber guitar work), although the band would likely be reluctant to accept such a compliment.

Throughout the album, transitions glide and instruments smudge into a warm wash of tones. It’s an orchestral wall of sound that is equally as entrancing as it is unnerving. The 12−minute album closer, for instance, gradually builds tension with clever use of smeared, formless guitar notes that create a sense of three−dimensional sound as notes seem to move from background to foreground, flitting around an imaginary room. Sparing tom drum rolls add to the growing claustrophobia, until ever−rebuilding waves of strings cascade into a grand crescendo that finishes as mysteriously as it began.

neurot recordings