The For Carnation

An album of six tracks, The For Carnation nearly went missing in this fortnight's singles pile. Which is especially ironic, given how vast and eternal-sounding this debut from ex-Slint frontman Brian McMahan is. Despite several uptempo passages, you come away with the impression of an album of intense, heart-stopping slowness and epic length, wherein there are dark infinities of space and hanging pauses between each note. Nothing happens, over and over.

The foundations are in sparse, brushed percussion; dial-tones and ghostly shades from keyboard and samples, and droplets of guitar. Added to this are intermittent soft arcs of dark strings, and sub-bass effects occasionally so far down that they are not so much audible as implied. Not that this is thinking bass-heavy bravado: the queerest thing about Carnation is - given the sheer amount that is going on here - how quiet everything is. If you listen, and as it draws you in you do, you notice how many layers of samples, strings and covert movements are making up the texture.

Lyrically, McMahan is hard to grasp, mainly because there are sometimes gaps of whole minutes between each thread of the tale, and by the time the next fragment arrives you have become lost in what's come before. Or, as I suspect, it may simply be that his words are impenetrable as opposed to profound. But no matter. The words serve a purpose, if an impressionistic one.

This is the soundtrack to a night of unrestful but not unpleasant sleep, full of dreams you can't quite remember the next morning.