From the cover, a black and white shot of a hut in woodland, you would be forgiven for thinking that “A Parade.“ was a Grandaddy-esque slice of alt country whimsy – the hut however, turns out to be ‘Angel Fetus’ studios and the music, produced by U.S. experimentalists ‘Random Touch’, emerges as a stretch of abstract electronica.
The tracks are oblique, like a series of digitally remastered Bowie outtakes from Hansa studios. The album is a grower – minimalist, expansive, effect-drenched smatterings of bass, drums and guitar and keyboards dropped in with the feigned precision of a Jackson Pollack wannabe scrutinising the canvas pre-splattering. This is all combined with clear the production and able musicianship which holds it all together.
“A Parade of Dusty Hobos“ veers between the ponderous sound sketches associated with second rate art installations and more seductive ambient compositions where tracks seem to progress from ideas in embryonic form towards identifiable songs coalescing before our ears.
In the opening track, ‘Deep in the Heart’ single notes fall, mournful as whalesong, eventually joined by cymbals and various electronic trills building slowly, almost imperceptibly to a stream of almost-music before dying away again.’Where We Come From’ is a short suggestion of a song where jazz-like hi-hat patterns flutter around synth notes before fading to silence.
As the album progresses, softly crashing piano chords are struck, guitar solos wind their way round the barest threads of sound and various percussion instruments amble in and out of it all. Tracks like ‘War Chalking’ admit squalls of jazz drumming into the mix and up the tempo and tracks like ‘Mapping Wordless Gestures’ indulge in dark crescendos, but elsewhere the tone is subdued.
It’s a brooding trek through this singular album and it may be that it is listened to as a source of ‘atmospherics’ as opposed a main point of focus, and yet, in a spirit of healthy self-indulgence the band members – Christopher Brown and James Day, joined by long time collaborator, Scott Hamill on guitar, have produced with this their fourth CD release, an album that isn’t so much trying to find the way forwards, as the way sideways.