October 16, 2024

Blanket – Our Brief Encounters

SELF-RELEASED     10TH February, 2017

 

This Lancastrian outfit create a wide-screen sweep of smooth cinematics, decorated with samples of dialogue and heavy use of the chorus pedal. Melodies are as sweet as anything Coldplay turn out but without the bedwetting sentimentality of Chris Martin & co – then guitars push into power-chords and shoe-gaze guitar-fanning washes waves of tonality over the tunes as they gain in weight and momentum.

It’s obvious, once the PR materials tell me, that this is a band of four professional musicians, with soundtrack work to their name as well as work with stacks of established bands. The sound is polished like a wet stone and covered with a gloss of shiny guitars and chorus effects, making these instrumentals glow. I can hear a lot of care and studio time here and it creates an oil-like sheen on this post-rock wash of sound.

Sort of meaningful dialogue appears in the set, as if from films, but reminding me of the hippy-raver-chillout fave Enigma, being merely another note of colour and depth. The album title gives colour too, referencing Carnforth Railway station, near their home, setting for the classic black and white stiff-upper-lip weepy. Nearly half an hour of sounds fade into one another, leaving the memory of a rich wall of sound.

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