(2023) Ulaan Passerine - Dawn    


Review:
A name can be a restrictive prescription, or it can be a license. In a career that spans a quarter century and a variety of artistic appellations, Steven R. Smith has had it both ways. His Hala Strana handle was so specifically associated with music that projected an aura of Eastern European melancholy that when he exhausted that line of inquiry, he retired the name. Ulaan Passerine, on the other hand, is more flexible. Under that banner, the Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist has made recordings devoted entirely to home-made instruments and to longer-duration compositions that make full use of Smith’s gear locker. Dawn distils the banner’s potentialities. Each of its eight pieces contains concentrates the atmosphere it evokes, both in method and material. Smith has a gift for crafting tunes that take you somewhere, and adorning them in ways that will populate the resulting imagined spaces with images and incidents. Dawn’s tunes are more eventful, their arrangements more layered with contrasting actions like the Pops Staples-meets Richard Thompson lick that rises out of a subliminal blur on “A Calvary of Clouds,” than those on New Evening or The Landscape Memory. The album also pushes further into territory hinted at on earlier UP recordings. Organ and mellotron draw melodic contours that have previously been carried by stringed instruments, and a four-piece horn section brings color and delicacy to passages that might previously have been hewn more roughly. But there’s never so much going on that the music might clog up the passageway from your speaker cones to your subconscious. Each melodic gesture lasts long enough to transport you, but not so long that you want to get off the road. Each transitional device imparts a hint of mystery before stepping aside, so that  the album’s relatively short pieces flow together like a pair of side-long suites. If music is your vehicle for getting to a better place, Smith’s remain hands you’ll want to have on the steering wheel. — dusted



Track List:
01 - White Oak
02 - A Calvary of Clouds
03 - Along the Pine Boards
04 - Birds of the Corporeal Age
05 - Anise
06 - Light of Lights
07 - Golden Mantle of Wool
08 - Gathering


Media Report:
Genre: ambient, post-rock
Country: Los Angeles, California, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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