WINGFIELD REUTER SIRKIS – Lighthouse

MoonJune 2017

WINGFIELD REUTER SIRKIS - Lighthouse

WINGFIELD REUTER SIRKIS –
Lighthouse

Burning a beacon of surprise, international trio of intrepid spirits beckon a storm to steer them away and bring back to safer haven.

Musicians are like children: leave them unattended, and they begin to play, mixing risk and fancy in various proportions. Leonardo Pavkovic, the MoonJune mastermind, knows this too well to lure the label’s associates in a studio and expect miracles to happen within an hour – the reasonable time for tea and getting acquainted. That’s what seemed to have happened when "The Stone House" came to life; only it was preceded by a fiercer, more immediate and less grounded session – slightly edited now to shape “Lighthouse” and host a series of most imaginative improvisations Mark Wingfield, Markus Reuter and Asaf Sirkis have ever been involved in.

Heralded with a harmonic riff, a guitar figure whose tail end stretches across unhurried beat to build tension and expands this dynamic soundscape across Catalonian skyline, album opener “Zinc” is a solemn parade of two distinctly different guitars that somehow conspire to create a solid, unified buzz – unpredictable yet totally pandering to the listener’s, let alone players’, anticipation and striving for blissful madness. It would bloom in “Derecho” where drums direct their circular stampede through the swamp of low, chthonic throb and deceptively chaotic meandering of fretboards-laid lanes only to slow down mid-way and observe the delirious swirl left in its wake. Ahead of the ensemble is something different, still, the epic “Ghost Light” bringing lucid strum to the fore to allow sensual, if spectral, melody seep in and hang the number’s strands amid Sirkis’ delicate patterns which may ebb away to metronomic tick-tock but resurface on cymbals’ wings once Markus and Mark arrange tuneful ripples from raging to pacific.

Carrying the mood further, towards surf twang, “Transverse Wave” has romantic delight distilled to emotional essentials yet it feels inescapably enticing. A little earlier, “Magnetic” sails past crystalline notes to turn into a floating field of fluid particles that gradually come together for an intense, immensely immersive wonder and then load their tangle of silvery slivers on a chugging engine and vanish in glory. There are vestiges of rock in these pieces, too, although bluesy hues behind “A Hand In The Dark” offer much more abstract clarity than its opening promise suggested, so “Surge” doesn’t let the grit slip, and the initial hint of heaviness finally comes to fruition – in a sand castle way.

Just like such an edifice, which is different every time it’s erected, “Lighthouse” sends a new signal with every new spin. 

*****

February 20, 2018

Category(s): Reviews
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