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MH-267 Lymbyc Systym - Shutter Release  With a touring schedule that keeps them on the road seemingly more than it gives them time at home, Lymbyc Systym have miraculously completed their second full-length album, entitled Shutter Release. Magnifying the already giant sounds of Love Your Abuser was not an easy task, but with Jeff Zeigler behind the boards recording the album and John Congleton (Modest Mouse, Explosions In The Sky) shaping the mixdowns, they’ve managed to do just that. Instrumentation has become broader, arrangements more grandiose, and melodies more focused, resulting in a sublime second album. While the stacked keys and busy drums that defined their previous outing still create the foundation of much of Shutter Release, the Brothers Bell have added acoustic and electric guitars, majestic brass and disembodied vocals to their arsenal. On Shutter Release, Lymbyc Systym prove there are few better than them at reviving memories with sound. |
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| Reviews Summary |
| Haunting post-rock instrumentals seep into your soul - AP / Draws you in and makes its world the only one there is - Houston Press / Lymbyc Systym emerge clean, pure, triumphant. Rejoice, a noble birth - Strangeglue / It's beautiful, it's moving - East Bay Express |
| Reviews |
| Band of brothers Lymbyc Systym surprised almost everybody when they featured on a split E.P alongside This Will Destroy You earlier this year. Despite TWDY being high up on the post-rock throne heir list, they were universally shamed by LS, sidestepping almost every cliché of the genre to deliver an offering to the genre not a million miles away from the inventiveness of current monarchs 65daysofstatic. Then, they had just fifteen minutes to prove their worth, now, on their second album, they have to sustain the complexity and the innovation over forty-minutes. The first welcome aversion is that of track length. With the likes of Pelican releasing songs nearing the thirty-minute-mark, it's almost a relief to find a band capable of getting across their ideas in an average time-frame of four-minutes. Beknownst to the them, their ideas are worthy of so much longer, but Shutter Release is all the better for the non-acquiescence to indulgence. Like the album title implies, each of the ten songs serves to capture an instant, a mood, an expression or a feeling. This doesn't make them one-horse-towns in terms of ideas though. Sure, the common inclination to follow a quiet/loud dynamic is shunned, but Lymbyc are eager explorers of limitation. "Ghost Clock" presents an overdose of child-like wonderment, spinning above the pronounced drum-line and the guitars start emulating the sound of bell chimes. The palette is widened then as a disconcerting drawl of distorted guitar chords injects threat, unease and paranoia into the mix. The conclusion is then given over to an awakening from disorientation. As with most instrumental efforts, the listener must be willing to imbue the songs with purpose, but they are easy canvasses to provide colour for: rich in texture and deep in contrast. This level of detail of consistently maintained throughout Shutter Release, that this feat is achieved without the effect ever leading to repetition or boredom is a grand testament to the sibling duo of Jared and Mike Bell. Even for the traditionalists there will be something. "Bedroom Anthem" exercises brief flashes of Sigur Ros as the splendidly measured low-key part of the song spend nearly 75% of its run building up to a vast eruption of choral vocalisations and jubilant brass sections sure to evoke fondness in the fans of Takk. Perhaps it will take a King Ralph situation to get these boys to the top of the table, but they are certainly entering the close periphery of the post-rock elite with this album. Which stamps the faces of the ten-a-penny pretenders who think four chords and a delay pedal qualifies as post-rock into the mud. Lymbyc Systym emerge clean, pure, triumphant. Rejoice, a noble birth. - Strangeglue |
