The 2kDozen 500: #339 - Brasstronaut, "Mean Sun"

The cover is of some sci-fi imagined 'scape. The music sounds like it would fit. They are a band (according to their Last FM bio) that "spend most of their time in a van". I suspect them of being a bit posh: one of my enduring themes this year. Although it's not like Pink Floyd were exactly secondary modern lads, eh?

It is hushed epic guitar, brushstroke drums and near-absent keyboard sounds. And there is brass. "The Grove" in particular has a nicely eviscerated feel, brass noises hang in the air in the space where there was other music. That My Bloody Valentine thing. They're from Vancouver, so I imagine there's a lot of space out there west to hang things from.

"Moonwalker" has a touch of the Major Toms: "I'm signing off in space/Remember me this way." There are minimalist touches, orchestral fragments gliding out of the water like dolphins. "Revelstoke Dam" has an eddying mass of them bunched up behind it. There's an air of Badly Drawn Boy that comes through too in the vocal delivery; but the hairy Christ child alone knows why I get that impression. "Hymn For Huxley" has an almost Bond-like guitar riff snaking through the long oboe grasses.

Why would this album have a track called "Falklands" on it? The lyrics seem to be a much more tropical seascape than the images from Goose Green in 1982 would suggest. Dreamy lyrics about diving and swimming and feeding from their hand. Even finds space for a tinkling piano disco stomp in the middle. I like it.

It's like "Mawrth Oer ar Planed Neifion" at the end of Mwng. And I love that track.

Rating: Swollen Brass out of Flooded Dreamscape