EAMON THE DESTROYER – A Small Blue Car – Re​-​made​/​Re​-​modelled

Bearsuit 2022

A fresh approach to a Scottish pastiche master’s vehicle finds him on the road to obscure raptures.

EAMON THE DESTROYER –
A Small Blue Car –
Re​-​made​/​Re​-​modelled

If you invite friends over for a playdate and tell them to bring along some toys, rest assured: quite a lot of your own things may get ruined yet combining of everyone’s favorite trinkets can produce interesting results. That’s exactly what happened when Eamon The Destroyer asked kindred spirits to have a field day with his "A Small Blue Car" album soon after its issue, which led not only to the record’s Eno-esque postmodernism in sonic terms but also to wondrous deconstruction of the source material. On the one hand, this was not a positive turn of events because, even though the original recordings’ complex collages allowed creative input from his fellow artists, their remixes removed the elemental intimacy Eamon’s aural mosaics exuded; on the other hand, there’s fresh conceptuality in the reshuffled order of tracks, where a few were approached more than once to shine a light on different, mutually incomparable facets of those cuts. However, when juxtaposed with prototype pieces, new numbers reveal a lot of alluring details.

Still, it’s not the outsiders’ sophistication that must impress the most here – a spectral operatic voice brought into the sinister whoosh of “Slow Motion Fade” by The Moth Poet nails the album’s intent in less than 90 seconds – but The Destroyer’s guests’ unique ability to retain the composer’s persona in various settings. Set aside the sweet schizophrenia of “The Conjuring Stops” as Andrei Rikichi, who embosses this cosmic throb with melodic strands, is simply an alter ego of the musician hidden behind the Eamon moniker, yet take, for instance, “Silver Shadow” where Yponeko replaces his strum ‘n’ shimmer with washes of musique concrète and Ryota Mikami shrouds his vocals in psychedelic swirl, while Société Cantine locates chamber grandeur in “Tomahawk Den” to expand the piece’s electric adventure. And while Stricknice searches the story of “Humanity Is Coming” to find the number’s groove, John 3:16 discovers spacey drama in there – all unlike the probes into “My Drive” performed by three sound-scientists which see House Of Tapes add haze and heavy riffs to acid folk, Michael Valentine West pour dynamic ambience into the raw pastorale, and Hanali unleash a tribal rhythm.

More so, the soft, if effervescent, reframing of the fabulous “Nothing Like Anything” by Like This Parade caresses the listener’s ears, its pseudo-orchestral treatment by Senji Niban will stress how impeccably the coherence of “A Small Blue Car” is preserved here. Here’s a vehicle that’s able to run in every make, in every guise and with every trim: an all-terrain type of transport to carry passengers beyond the pale.

*****

November 21, 2022