These New Puritans

And the others are Muse :)

Mention them not.

Actually, I'd really, really recommend North Sea Radio Orchestra, a chamber-prog-indie-classical outfit whose music might be to your taste:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hp3yViKCLo

I'd also recommend William D. Drake's output. Here's a choice track from a fucking amazing instrumental chamber-pastoral-pop record: http://williamddrake.bandcamp.com/track/at-the-end-of-the-harbour-wall

Ignore the one I just linked - might not be to all tastes. Start at the beginning. http://williamddrake.bandcamp.com/album/yews-paw

XXXP - I don't think I've ever heard Nadia Sirota's music, I only know her as a Nico Muhly cohort.

Maybe some Muhly/Bedroom Community stuff comes close, Ben Frost or Valgier?

NSRO hmm, maybe I don't see them as coming from the Classical world really, neither that weasel faced little knob from Muse either.

Muse was not 100% a serious recommendation

someone should tell them that

SERIOUS RECS ONLY PLZ

Oh wow.

I'm listening to the album again and V (The Island Song) is so, so fucking good.

Van der Graaf Generator "Climb every mountain"

Just listening to this for the first time now. Obviously I like it but it seems too composed. The chord changes are kind of oppressively drawn out and there's always something sinister lurking in the background.

"Organ Eternal" is the only thing so far (nearly done the album) with any real lift to it.

Great job by Graham Sutton though. The production is massive.

This is a eh ell of a record but I've no idea when I'll actually listen to it.

That's what I thought. Maybe at work?

I'm still at the stage of figuring out what it sounds like, I feel like there's a really obvious touchstone that hasn't been mentioned yet. Talk talk obv, and the 2nd this heat album (as ever) but something else on the tip of my tongue. For a minute I sort of fancied that it sounded like aerial but that isn't it.

June 10 can't arrive fast enough IMO

Reminds me of 'Hex' more than Talk Talk (perhaps inevitably), but also of 'Comicopera' in parts.

wyatt came to mind instantly but I thought it was just the this heat-ness of it

I'm still certain there's a missing piece, and a really obvious one, but maybe not

I just did a track-by-track of this for tQ which mentioned Wyatt. Amongst others.

http://thequietus.com/articles/12399-these-new-puritans-field-of-reeds-review

that's my train reading sorted then, thx scik

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2013/may/30/these-new-puritans-popandrock?CMP=twt_fd

there is an undercurrent of Labradford circa E Luxo So in the song structures here, though the arrangements aren't nearly as sparse

Going to have to wait a bit on that due to morning work but I WILL hear that before lunch, dammit.

Also how did I forget you were a Labradford fan.

in fairness I only know that one album (but MAN that album)

Agreed! Trying to remember if that was the most recent one the one time I saw them on tour...

Just on my first listen now. Obviously there is a there is Talk Talk comparison to be made, but also there's a maybe little hint of Radiohead too in places? In the first half of the record anyway - I'm thinking of the offishness of the melody in Fragment Two, and it's also got that dusk-is-falling ambience that I associate with Hail To The Thief. Mostly though wow, this is just out there on its own. Going to take a while to digest cos it doesn't really boil down to one particular mood, it's quite complex in that sense. Some bits are full of this awful creeping dread and you've got things like those phantasmagorical voices rising up out of the murk in 'Spiral' which are pretty fucking diabolical, but then there's all these other feelings being introduced into it all the time, all those little harmonic shifts in the scenery, notes that puncture the gloom like shining shards of glass, certain passages that don't exactly sound hopeful but maybe do have have a sense of resolve about them... fuck shit fuck I wanna shut up now and listen more, this is awesome!

One thing I really love about this band is the amazing sense of place that you get from their music. Obviously the title of this album is pretty suggestive anyway but yeah, for me this is totally music of boggy brownfield sites, those shitty neglected places at edge of city, places that always seem to be lashed with rain or hidden by mist, or at least they seem that way whenever I've been birdwatching or walking or whatever there. But it's not just about the rubbish and ruin of our times, there's also this weird sense of history, secrets held in the mud and in the ditches, like lifting up a rusty shopping trolley and finding a bog-man in the mire beneath. I guess the Karl Hyde album is about the same edgeworld zone too, but this is so much richer and more mysterious.

That's what I hear in it anyway, always get reminded of those passages in Riddley Walker where they're at work wallowing around in the mud looking for scraps of mangled metal and finding all these redundant artefacts from our civilisation and then trying to piece them together to get some sort of understanding of how they got to where they're at now.

Listening now; predictably enough I'm fucking bowled over. The missing piece of the comparisons puzzle you're all trying to assemble upthread is quite possibly later-period Ulver, btw

V (Island Song) will be very, very, very hard to beat for song of the year

here's a stream for the curious: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2013/may/30/these-new-puritans-popandrock

Linked a few posts back...

that's true. nice one getting scik mouthy out of retirement as well, tnp - not many bands manage that nowadays

this album seems to ebb and flow - some tracks feed into the grander narrative, and some serve as climaxes in themselves. so it can be listened to as a whole and as a showcase for some amazing songs. which means it'll be making some severe inroads to both of my year-end ballots

Finishing my listen now, quite lovely. Not as monumental per se as Hidden but it doesn't need to be, and I enjoy it very well from the get-go. Glad there's still interest in these kind of approaches out there.

Really wish an interviewer would bother to ask them about the 20th century classical music they're influenced by because there's something a bit eyeroll-provoking about the parade of straw-grasping comparisons to whichever ambient rock band the listener happens to like best.

ok, the missing piece of the puzzle is *googles* arvo part!

Yeah, there's something to Part for sure in there.

file under: snarky comebacks that accidentally passed sincere comment

meanwhile the album's still very good, on track 7 now. when's the HI DERE liveblog?

I already listened to it in rapt fascination and am back on Weill

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/may/30/these-new-puritans-record-hawk

Decent interview here. I'm not sure I believe the bit about the bass singer but the bit about the hawk is insane. Can anyone actually tell which song it's on?

ok this is very lovely. and serious...i mean, most of the music i listen to is 'serious', maybe this is more like intensely studious.

so track #6 must be the hawk, huh.

Agree that classical composition would be a more fruitful point of comparison than rock, especially when the drums disappear. There's obviously a bit of Reich at the start of one song, forget which. There's some Italian horror soundtrack vibes there somewhere as well maybe.

Sorry my rambling upthread was a bit tangential and pointlessly personal, but I guess this thing lends itself more to imaginative interpretation more than having any sort of functional use. Can't dance to it, can't really use it at dinner parties, would sound shit in a car, can't even really relax to it. Think what I was getting at is that instead of being some Talk Talkish meditation on the spirit of Eden, it feels more like they're dealing with a particular manifestation of the messy cultural entropy at the end of history.

This thread title btw, when was the last time anyone listened to Navigate, Navigate?

I don't get why you couldn't play this at a dinner party, or say as background music in your headphones at work

Well I did listen to it at work, but I didn't really get a whole lot done while it was on.

it's the best background headphone work music i've heard in months. so many lush long tones on low brass & organ.

This sounds amazing on grey drizzly mornings, and it's a fantastic album to read to, but it works best on Sunday evening I've found.

Yeah I agree that the noise on Organ Eternal is probably the hawk. Incidentally I have 'flown' a harris hawk before and they a) go miles very fast and b) are fucking difficult to control so god knows how they managed in a recording studio.

when that shifting orchestral motif breaks through about 4:10 into V (Island Song) it's juuuuuuuust the greatest

as a youth I read a couple of falconry books and decided that I wanted a gyr falcon, but it never happened