Antarctica (Bliss Out, Vol. 2) by Windy & Carl (Review)
When I got this album, I was expecting something akin to the Cocteau Twin’s Victorialand album, just from what I heard on Victorialand and what I had heard about Windy & Carl. They sound nothing alike, other than the general ethereal, shimmering quality of the two bands. Windy & Carl hail from Dearborn, Michigan and the duo has received quite a bit of critical and fan acclaim for their ethereal/space-rock music. I had been wanting to hear their music for awhile, and since Antarctica was only $8 or so, I opted to go with it.
Slap in Antarctica and you get 3 tracks (41 minutes) of shimmering, lethargic drone rock, a la Bowery Electric. But whereas Bowery Electric sticks in some jungly drum loop, Windy & Carl seem content to let their music slowly ebb and swell, building up momentum or fade away. Basically, it’s the perfect music to listen to when you have migraine.
The title track seems to be built around a loop of churning, crunching static (maybe it’s the crunch of footsteps in old snow) and a pulsing bass. Meanwhile, all sorts of shiny, rattling, shimmering sounds are coaxed out of the guitar, like watching the rising sun play off of millions of snow and ice crystals (it is Antarctica, after all). Phrases of guitar just seem to float and mingle through each other, while the static and echoing bassline propels the whole swirling mass. It’s like a Seefeel track extended to the extreme. At times the thing builds up to a crescendo that fades away and lets you fall back again.
With “Traveling” and “Sunrise,” we actually have a melody. But rather than being a bad thing and preventing the “ambient” side of the music come forth, it simply adds a new dimension. Like the first track, “Traveling” is all built around a simply repeating guitar phrase, while we have more glittering and shimmering(the only words that seem to fit) drones and fragments. Then slowly, out of nowhere, a wave of sound comes, building and it grows and the other elements seem to fade away, until it too disappears. Noises, like the cold Antarctic winds, hurl and throw about just on the edge of the piece, and soft wind chimes dance.
Out of this builds the slow bassline of “Sunrise,” which is probably my favorite track on the album. In many ways, this is probably has the most song-like structure of any of the 3 tracks. More strands of guitar noise and etherea going floating off into nowhere, anchored by the bassline. They rain down like the golden rays of the sun as it just cuts across the horizon of the frozen land.
It’s always hard to review an album like this without using words like “shimmering,” “droning,” “glittering,” floating,” or other such adjectives in every other sentence. That’s always the hard part about reviewing ethereal music, because there’s such a limited vocabulary to use, without going into all sorts of boring and exhaustive detail. Suffice it to say that Antarctica lives up to Windy & Carl’s reputation.
Fans of a slower, instrumental Slowdive, or any floaty, droney should probably check this out. I didn’t find this album as groundbreaking or landmark as possible. At times, like a lot of this music, it sounds like they just strummed the strings and let the effects pedals do all of the rest, while they just hit “record.” It probably won’t become a subject to frequent playing like other albums of its kind, but it’s not a bad addition to the collection of any lover of ethereal “rock” music.