Mesmeric, slow-build, mid-tempo, woozy, psychedelic-electronica folk of gentle, personal, reflective dark humour, profundity and melancholy by the Isle of Eigg-based Scottish musician Johnny Lynch in his sixth LP, here produced by Mike Lindsay of Tunng and LUMP themed around metaphorical ooze, transformation, exhaustion, hope, guilt, and renewal. It was also created in Lindsay's M.E.S.S. studio in Margate as well as input from longtime collaborators Rob Jones and Joe Cormack.
Slime in various forms oozes into the equation, for better or worse, across this album, and is the stuff of life and death, creation and destruction and clearly also expresses a sense of life crisis. With a catchy, pleasing fusion of electronica and acoustic, and a slight vocal distortion brings gentle sense of guilt and doom - “Looky here, I'm frightened by / The ways in which we complicate our lives …For the life of me, I've fucked up again / In the light of all I've loved.” The title track pours forth visually as well as audibly, a crisp psychedelic synth pop number moving into Toxic Spillage, and a croaky frog rhythmic vocals of the catchy Battery Pack that slips dreamily and woozily into a Syd Barrett psychedelia. Another Way is an 8-minute gentle odyssey of gradual transformation, synths and spongey bass, rising to a krautrock-inspired crescendo (“Rolling out, gently waking / You move me like a stone / Crumbling out, escaping.” Sorry Eyes thumps along catchily with a lovely acoustic guitar but is about shame and withdrawal, while the more stripped-back folk of Infinity Ooze has a beautiful dreamy air and series of lovely couplets in verses: “Only the serum is what remains / Life's clear slime from our unclotted veins / Now, from this hollow shell, a pulse emanates / Softly sustaining our preserving energy. The way it flows, it binds, and forms anew / The ratio of water with glue.” The final two, Torch Song, and Werewolf Ending, start as as a quiet, acoustic melancholy and meditation (“When it's our love that's bringing me down / I can't pretend that I'll just pull myself out”) the latter, starting with just acoustic guitar, builds into electronica and multi-tracked vocoder vocals and a a playful sense of purpose: "In these closing scenеs, as credits roll/Were you the ending after all?" Eccentric, bittersweet and beautiful. Out on Out on Fire Records / Lost Map.
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