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Brightblack Morning Light - Motion To Rejoin (Matador)
UK release date: 3 November 2008
3.5 stars
Brightblack Morning Light - Motion To Rejoin

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track listing

1. Introduction
2. Hologram Buffalo
3. Gathered Years
4. Oppressions Each
5. Another Reclamation
6. A Rainbow Aims
7. Summer Hoof
8. Past A Weatherbeathen Fencepost
9. When Beads Spell Power Leaf
Those of you who remember Brightblack Morning Light's eponymous 2006 album will hopefully be ready for some more stoner country blues from the biggest hippy stereotypes this side of Woodstock.

Naybob Shineywater and Rachel Hughes really do spout a fair amount of utter tosh in their press releases and on their websites, but luckily their music is virtually voiceless apart from the odd bit of Shamanic chanting woven in with uber-bassy guitars, piano and slow percussion.

This means that if you prefer not to be lectured on the evils of coal and nuclear power, corporate development and yadda yadda, their beliefs on all of the above are easy to ignore. Though don't forget to let them know about any local environmental issue in your area because hey presto, if you do they'll be more than happy to comment on it for ya.

Overall, though, the music is worth wading through everything else for. Comprising slow, low, dreamtime psychedelics that reverberate with the spirit of the Earth it will relax your body and open your mind and ... see? A couple of tracks of this and they'll have you talking rubbish as well. It's infectious.

Recorded on a mesa in a shack with only four solar panels to provide energy and, therefore, aligned with the phases of the sun (or so they say), Motion To Rejoin is blissfully minimalist in places, timeless and placeless. Like warm air clinging to the sunburned rocks because it's too lazy to rise, this really is a hymn to those who have tuned in, dropped out and turned their brains to mush.

It's music to let yourself drift away to. Not exactly a lullaby but certainly the soundtrack to a spirit vision as you lose yourself in your mind's eye and wait for your spirit guide to appear. Be warned: rather than a buff, half-naked Native American with a mohawk, he'll be an unwashed, barefooted hippy who hasn't shaved this century but he will appear and you will smile benevolently at him when he does.

As the nine tracks merge into one another, melting together in the same way the sky and the land will mix as you watch the burning sun blend over them, it becomes impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. With additional instrumentation provided by trombones, sax, melotron and bass flute as well as sonorous piano and guitars, the music is never empty but equally there is always plenty of space to move, or rather to float away into that wide, empty sky.

Occasionally, such as on A Rainbow Aims, higher notes rise above the low tones, dancing skittishly over the bassline. It all floats along so dreamily, though, that it's hard to notice the joins. Just lie back and let it float over you instead. You won't regret it in the morning.

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Damon Albarn Graham Coxon Alex James




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