wizards tell lies / the revenant sea

Been such an age since we featured Wizards Tell Lies in these pages that we feel compelled to hang our heads in shame. It’s not for the fact that there have been no releases – there have – an abundance in fact including outings for isobel ccircle (an ongoing collaboration with April Larson) which we are now pencilling in for a separate missive. For now though something that piqued our interest and earlobes alike from WTL alter ego the Revenant Sea here with Wizards Tell Lies in fact (which given both are one and the same must prove a confusing choice in the which hat am I wearing at the moment stakes) and here found offering four multi-faceted sound spectrum bending perspectives on the Black Classical track ‘Communion’. In truth this collection offers perhaps the most accessible entry to the Wizards / Revenant secret lair and much like his previous limited issue face off with Roadside Picnic is awash in lighter tonalities kissed with a sense of grandeur, that said for old school Wizard aficionados the ‘cleaver shade’ mix is etched in shards of wind tunnelled howls and the kind of noise abstractia to which admiring devotees of Bruce Russell would do well to tune into at an instant whilst in sharp contrast ‘arc tract’ is ice sculptured in a sweetly bliss kissed definition whose lunar lilts and chiming cascades dissolve and dissipate to accentuate a majestic sonic salvo that’s pierced with the cool calm and ice dripped atmospherics of a youthful Echoboy. That said it’s the brace of cuts book ending the set that provide the finest moments, ‘first light’ appears gloriously bathed in a stately procession of sweetly demurred crystalline key flurries that waltz and genuflect to a Brontean motif softly shrouded in celestial whispers which on first encounter recall fort dax’s irresistibly immense ‘at bracken’ set though which on repeat listening gives up trace elements of the seductive forlorn romance peppering John Foxx’s back catalogue. ‘ghostshift’ though is something altogether special, a 12 minute curtain closer to which the full Revenant Sea craft is applied, shimmering orbs of ghostly timbres and dream like sequences that greet its entrance endow it with a statuesque slow burn resonance, both measured and monumental the elements slowly converge fall away and re-forge a new revealing sun peaked eclipses of celestial jubilance, breathless stuff. Available as a free download – http://simimansound.bandcamp.com/album/communion-ep