The Child Readers - Music Heard Far Off [Soft abuse - 2008]Music heard far off presents the listener with a collection of awkward, muffled sometimes quite touching and feeling songs that sit somewhere between discordant pop, lo-fi electroinca, ragged and brittle guitar scapes, a-drift folk, noise and haphazard junk yard or overgrown ambience. Imagine a less angry and up-tight Fog hazed by psychedelics meeting jittery fields of Popal Vuh electric guitar work, then stir in primal groove and spacey gone off the boil Boo Radleys & you get something close to The child Readers. The whole album seems so dense & foggy as the title suggest it feels as if it’s been beamed in from another time or reality- vocals shimmer and wonder as guitar kaleidoscope shift, organ work smudges and lo battery powered electronics drift. Song structure try to start but fall in on them selves, vocal harmonies wonder off into last sunlight dust hazes and field recordings drift in and out unsaw if they should be here or not. There’s a really feeling of out of time ness and ultimate been lost wondering through out the albums 50 minutes stager, waver and murk. An album you’ve got to let your self slowly rub into it’s blurry, half-awake vibe. If you try too hard it will make little effect on you, the but slow to it’s pace, screw up your eyes and you’ll feel the magic, awkward beauty and strange loose & terminal fucked charm of it all. Roger Batty
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