It has been a year since I last heard from Pressed And through two EP’s, and then I hadn’t heard from him since. A new recording has been brought to my attention, this time an album called Stone Candles (Mush), and if the two EP’s I had reviewed before were a true stone gas, this one is a lighter towards the flame.
This album works for me because of how Andrew Hamlet and Mat Jones compile the songs they bring in, make it come close to sounding like a car wreck but blending it to where there is never a collision or injuries. Even when things don’t fit at first, such as the mixture of abstract voices chopped and sliced over a tribal beat during the intro of “Get”, it sounds like the sounds are joining hands in unison, understanding the common cause towards making nice dance tracks. Then add to that the acoustic guitar comes in and fashion, it’s a foreign entity, that of pulsating funk nuggets layered over folk heroes and a tambourine jangling in the background, and you’re brought into what’s going on because of the strangeness, which sounds and feels good.
Stone Candles is a collection of music that, in other genres, may be due to a chemical imbalance. It’s natural sounds mixed in with synths and electronic sources and samples, a voice run through Auto-Tune when it shouldn’t be, but its use makes sense within the context of the other sounds in the background (as is the case with “Decision Made”). It’s as if someone threw some of their favorite records in an old jukebox, then pulled out a sledgehammer to beat the shit out of it. The glue is Pressed And, and it would be nice if they added their adhesiveness to a lot of today’s artists, they need a sense of stickiness so that they can stop falling apart in front of us. Eh, let’s keep Pressed And for us and make them our personal secret. - This Is Books Music |
