GRAILS — Take Refuge in Clean Living
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"This latest album from Grails features an expanded quintet line-up, facilitating a three-pronged guitar assault. More than ever, Grails' doomy krautrock experimentation is charged with a muscular, stoneage potency on pieces like 'Take Refuge' (an eight-minuter populated by American-gothic blues licks and mariachi brass) or the slow moving pentatonic riffs and Eastern instrumental flourishes that prop up on the illustratively titled 'Stoned At The Taj Again'. The likes of 'PTSD' and '11th Hour' carry more of a pensive, atmospheric feel, with the latter fashioning a sinister, baroque mood while the former comes across as slightly less structured, but heavier on the (dare I say it) 'vibes'. Almost a polar opposite of the avant-garde gloom that colours much of this, the glistening, undistorted guitar tones and vaporous soundscaping qualities of 'Clean Living' sound lighter than air, floating on a bed of strings and pianos that hint towards discordance but never quite go that far. Grails have delivered five great instrumental pieces - as detailed and thorough as they are unclassifiable. It's another masterful album from one of the great undiscovered bands. Highly Recommended." [Boomkat]
"LP is limited to 1000 copies packaged in a deluxe heavy duty tip-on style jacket with a 5th color spot gloss and bonus poster. First 200 copies are on purple vinyl. Opening with a nod to Syd Barret's Pink Floyd (Piper at the Gates of Dawn) Take Refuge In Clean Living begins with morse code and drops into one of the heaviest slow-burn grooves in the Grails canon. Sounding something like Hawkwind and Ravi Shankar scoring Bladerunner, it's lysergic and earthy for Grails in a new way. The rest of the record moves from blissful Eno-inspired ambience, to epic Morricone rock hymns, to an unexpected take on a Ventures tune that returns the listener back to the very beginnings of instrumental rock music. 'Take Refuge in Clean Living' sees Grails pulling back their already-wide lens on multiple sonic horizons. Grails often take what seems like it would sound over-ambitious on paper and make it flow sonically in a laid-back style. The band is defined by exploration and they've created a template for themselves where any style or method can be ingested to reap legitimate rewards. 'Take Refuge' seems to suggest that Grails can't run out of ideas." [label info]
www.importantrecords.com
"LP is limited to 1000 copies packaged in a deluxe heavy duty tip-on style jacket with a 5th color spot gloss and bonus poster. First 200 copies are on purple vinyl. Opening with a nod to Syd Barret's Pink Floyd (Piper at the Gates of Dawn) Take Refuge In Clean Living begins with morse code and drops into one of the heaviest slow-burn grooves in the Grails canon. Sounding something like Hawkwind and Ravi Shankar scoring Bladerunner, it's lysergic and earthy for Grails in a new way. The rest of the record moves from blissful Eno-inspired ambience, to epic Morricone rock hymns, to an unexpected take on a Ventures tune that returns the listener back to the very beginnings of instrumental rock music. 'Take Refuge in Clean Living' sees Grails pulling back their already-wide lens on multiple sonic horizons. Grails often take what seems like it would sound over-ambitious on paper and make it flow sonically in a laid-back style. The band is defined by exploration and they've created a template for themselves where any style or method can be ingested to reap legitimate rewards. 'Take Refuge' seems to suggest that Grails can't run out of ideas." [label info]
www.importantrecords.com