The Drift: Blue Hour (Temporary Residence)

First of all.....just take a look at how completely beautiful that vinyl is. Can you get something so stunningly gorgeous via a fucking download? Or a compact bastard disc? No, of course you can't, and you never will - this is why i love vinyl so much and why it will live on through the next few technological changes, the sheer aesthetic beauty that can never be replaced - even if somebody finds a way to mirror the audio quality (and all i can say to that is....bring it on...).

Ok, rant over, let's get to the music.

This has been described as a new beginning for The Drift since the passing of trumpet player Jeff Jacobs, and i can see why in the sounds that fly out of the speakers. There seems to be genuine anger in the guitar playing in second track 'Barde 1' that i've rarely heard before in their previous records and this is where they come closest to sounding like labelmates Explosions in the Sky who they have, unjustly, been compared to on this new album. I can understand why some people make the comparison - this is a more rock  album than the previously more dubby sound but i feel that their use of space, texture and meditative rhythms (most notably on the hypnotic opener 'dark passage') still holds enough sway and creative excitement to be far above the dreaded fear of being justanotherbloodypostrockalbum. Like the Grails album earlier this year (also on the fantastic going-from-strength-to-strength-by-branching-out Temporary Residence label), this is an album that is not afraid to fuck with the expected formula. They could've made another album in the similar vein to 'Memory Drawings' - albeit by drafting in a replacement for Jacobs, but instead they decided to push the boundaries outwards and see where it took them. And it seems to have taken them on a bass-heavy (but decidedly undubby) journey where kosmiche influences sit happily with their past influences to produce a sound that is as spaciously new and genre-defying as it is touchingly faithful to their past.

I suppose this could be seen as more of a bridge between the old and the new, which makes looking forward to the next Drift album even more exciting.