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
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