I fully believe that your current environment and state of life can make or break an album for you. An album listened to in the dead of Winter, dark and cold and dreary, can sound completely different when listened to in the blistering sun of Summer, or revisited 10 years later when you’ve matured and grown.
Listening to this album by Conquering Animal Sound is the soundtrack to a snowstorm as I walk through it, every snowflake falling in time with the music, every frigid gust of wind carrying in a new song, every snow-covered step I take equates to a pop here or a hiss there. Stopping to cross the road I look down at my feet, covered in mud and slush as the snow slowly sails down towards them and I feel like I’m watching a movie, one of those slow motion scenes where the main character is in deep thought, and emotive and heartfelt music accompanies them until they resume life at normal speed.
At eleven songs long the album (on paper) might seem like standard length, but when you actually get into it and give yourself up to every one of its intricacies you could spend a lifetime inside these songs; their encompassing and cohesive nature cause you to forget just how much time you’ve actually spent listening to them. I’m not even going to go into what this sounds like or who they sound like, not because they don’t sound like anyone else, but because I want you to listen to them without any kind of pre-conceived notion about their sound or contemporaries. From Scotland, this is exactly what we need, something fresh in an otherwise stale music scene strangled by Folk and regurgitated Indie-Rock. Just hit play and enjoy.
Their debut album “Kammerspiel” is out today (February 7th) so head over to their label’s Bandcamp and grab it. It’s already on my top albums of 2011.
Connect with Conquering Animal Sound – Facebook | MySpace | Last.fm | Website
