Elkeyes are the latest signing to Bearsuit Records, the band prefer to stay anonymous but were willing to confirm they have nothing to do with Southend's finest karaoke legend The Elk, especially because they are based North of the border.
The album opens with the spiritual jazz infused Trial that adds ambient electronic elements to unsettle listeners before they end up in the dock for sharing the wrong emails again.
Yamanote Line opens like they are observing the cargo being loaded into one of the Yamanote Lines signature shipping containers, ready to be hauled across the country on a freight train, the slow tones building towards a howling freight train horn and rumbling through the night. This was not commissioned for a TV ad drumming up more business but feels more like some oblique signalling to the sad man at the end of the platform collecting Yamanote Line crate numbers.
Thalassophobia comes from the shores of Loch Ness where deep within those infamous waters lurks the very thing that gives Elkeyes the heebeegeebees solitary piano notes and buried strings conjure anxious moments, that will need to be drowned later in the bus station bar at Inverness, the feelings that this comes form a modern horror film are never far away.
The Dark Forest sounds like several toys have been wound up and are making childish noises, that have been corralled into a child like techno soundscape, like you can hear the whispers in the woods, tremulous feelings of almost Gamelan percussion and calls from strange animals keep you on edge while traversing The Dark Forest at night.
Ephemeral sounds for an Ephemeral world, long droned tonalities like an amplifier has been turned way up and is just buzzing, while the singing bell like notes shape shift through the buzzed drones helping mesmeric meditations.
Evensong takes the ritual sounds and slows them right down like you are listening to the service from deep within the catacombs beneath a medieval church, the odd choral vocals descend through the ancient stones to mutate your mind and bring clarity to your situation, chained deep beneath the altar.
Breathing The Blues getting your breathwork right, freeing your mind to allow these sounds to imbue your core with feelings of calm peacefulness, white sage rituals and chanting for relief from the 21st century blues across the slow violins and echo laden sounds accompanying your measured breathing, each breath counted while naming another worthwhile blues act, while wondering what Robert Johnson would make of music like this and if he would have thought this is the music to play at the crossroads when you got to meet your devil.
The album closes with Fallen an abstruse tonal plain being manipulated and transformed though the static shifting across the speakers, buzzing your mind and following the fall of truth and honesty while we transform society in ways gentle ambience will never quite reach sadly.
Find out more at https://bearsuitrecords.bandcamp.com/album/elkeyes https://www.facebook.com/bearsuitrecords
