(2023) BCMC - Foreign Smokes      


Review:
Take a bow Bill Mackay and Cooper Crain, the Chicago duo whose new outfit is a strange, thrilling tonic to these ears. We know Bill’s ace guitar licks well from his solo work and collaborations, the most recent being this year’s Black Duck trio album. Cooper Crain is best known for his role in the psychedelic drone band CAVE and its side project, Bitchin Bajas. For this wonderfully minimalist four tracker, Bill provides improvised electric guitar notes that Cooper builds organ and synth textures into the background of. The result is an unhurried, quite blissful listening experience of music that doesn’t try too hard to impress and, therefore, manages to consistently. Little touches like the bendy Wah Wah effect on Bill’s guitar on Ripple in High Tide are gorgeously beguiling, as are the twinkling synth notes running alongside them and the rhythmic pull of the back beat. The result is a mellow yet ethereal experience, not unlike diving in the ocean. Deceptively similar in pacing is The Swarm; although not as dramatic as its horror film namesake, the leisurely tempo of the song belies an altogether uneasier and edgier piece than Ripple, with scraped strings and an ominous bass line – entering furtively at the halfway point – imitated by Bill’s picked notes. The pair manage to create many subtle textures on this song while hardly altering its structure. It all contributes to a tense and nervy soundscape and a masterclass in understatement. Simpler in style and more accessible in character is the final track, Sunset Saturn, which uses a keyed refrain as a backdrop for light organ notes and shimmering guitar lines. There is reverb across this whole record, but due to the spacious nature of this piece, its drenching is all the more noticeable and lends the music the astral vibe appropriate to its title. The fade out to drone is a fitting end to an album that plays out like one continual experimental, inquisitive journey rather than a set of four songs. Its improvised nature also gives it an appealing freshness and dynamism, while the ability of both players ensures interest at every turn. — folkradio.co.uk



Track List:
01 - Foreign Smokes [10:02]
02 - The Swarm [09:26]
03 - Ripple in High Tide* [10:00]
04 - Sunset Saturn [11:06]


Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk, ambient
Country: Chicago, Illinois, 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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*Warning: track 3 is not perfect. It has a cut in the end