WINDMILL - EPCOT STARFIELDS
September 17, 2009,
Written by Nicole Holgate
Label: Melodic
Release date: 21/09/09
Website: Myspace
This is Windmill's second album, after 'Puddle City Racing Lights' and it's not a huge departure from their first – more of a massive expansion. It does what it says on the tin, and 'Epcot Starfields' has a feeling of infinite, sparkling blackness, an epic starscape.
There's still a foundation of piano but with less focus on an overriding melody, concentrating instead on heartbreaking chords, slower pacing and experiments with other instruments. The piano works amazingly with the carefully layered noise, which is for the most part totally lacking drums. Matthew Thomas Dillon's vocals are even more strangled, but simultaneously express the soaring, uplifting mood of the backing.
This album unfolds like a slow-motion firework, and despite the shift from basic melodic pop, is more sing-along-able, with clearer, and painfully expressive, lyrics.
It's cold and dark but also soft and enveloping, a surreal, swirling, outer-space journey, at once startlingly tender and bleak, suspended in a vacuum, filled with shimmering lights which race by, rushing and joyous. Brilliant.
Rating: 9/10
Related Posts
Aaron - 13/03/10
This is jokes! [view article]
danny - 12/03/10
This is absolute, unmitigated, GENIUS. Contender for my favourite video ever I think! Absolutely sick song too, prefer it to Ambling Alp fo sho. [view article]
danny - 12/03/10
This girl is amaaaazing! [view article]
duncan - 12/03/10
Nirvana, mainly because they were over and done with before I was musically conscious so Dave Grohl couldn't ruin them for me by how intrinsically annoying he is. [view article]
Will - 12/03/10
We are including all his musical directions in the debate, which is why we're discussing whether he was better in Foo Fighters or Probot also. Facts are he is a better drummer than he is a guitarist or vocalist, and as we're debating which band he was best in rather than which band he made the best, he thus performed better in Nirvana and QOTSA. To repeat what some of the others have said, he's been good in Foos and had a lot of fame, but hasn't been nearly as influential or impressive as in the bands beforehand. [view article]