Kate Carr – Summer Floods (Flaming Pines)

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Kate Carr - Summer Floods (Flaming Pines)

Released at the beginning of Autumn on her own Sydney-based label, I’m afraid that this slight EP (in packaging terms, anyways) was lost in the veritable tsunami of releases I’ve been spinning at the western edge of the desert. The following Summer has just rolled around, and what better (yet somewhat tardy) time to review an unique and engaging release that is entwined within many skeins of modern music (ambience, hypnogogia and post-rock, to name a few), yet manages to knit it’s own unique feel and logic into a micro-universe all of Carr’ creation.

Starting with a dusty Labradford-esque guitar and layers of digital thrum, Carr’ opening track foregrounds feeling and resonant tones over the garrulous pleasures of “Saturday Night’. “Comfort in the Sound’ counterpoints electroacoustic, echoic pianos and subdued melodies with slight digital splutters and dripping stalactites; this is more akin to 90s curiosities like Main and Bugskull than Dolphins into the Future. Dreaming of a small rowing boat to rescue me form the mundane, “From These Dreams a Boat’s mixes woozy, pitched down synths, subtle breath, subdued ululations and a seasick logic to an urban landscape littered with floating refrigerators and elemental concerns. There’ no choir in sight (they might just be obscured) for “A Choir Full of Longing’, these orientalist strings and backwards-masked textures could be an outtake from Brian Eno’ Music for Films, or a companion piece to Hwyl Nofio’ “The Fish in the Tide’.

Flaming Pines has been busy since the upwelling of Summer Floods. For more releases full of antipodean ambience with teeth, imbued with a sense of place and logic that suits the weathered sandstone and resilient eucalypts of the Sydney Basin, check out Flaming Pines here.

Oliver Laing

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Music Obsessive / DJ / Reviewer - I've been on the path of the obsessive ear since forever! Currently based in Perth, you can check out some radio shows I host at http://www.rtrfm.com.au/presenters/Oliver%20Laing

3 Comments

  1. He’s so enigmatic that I fear he’s fallen off the radar since ‘Hounded by Fury’ in 2006. I interviewed him in 2007 for the Night Flight radio show on 2SER in Sydney. A very interesting chat…

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