release date: May 15, 2006
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,42]
producer: Robin Guthrie
label: Rocket Girl - nationality: Scotland, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Continental" - 3. "Crescent" - 4. "Monument" (live on KEXP) - 6. "The Day Star" - 10. "Pale"
2nd solo album by Scottish artist Robin Guthrie following three years after Imperial (2003) is the first of four albums originally released on American label Darla Records - issued by Rocket Girl in Europe. Since the debut he has made the second and final album Russian Doll (2004) togeher with Siobhan de Maré in their duo-project Violet Indiana, and he has collaborated with American composer Harold Budd in making the music score Mysterious Skin: Music From the Film (2005), but Continental is his second pure solo album, and as the first, an album of instrumental compositions.
The album differs from his first and also from his recent collaborative releases by being more uptempo founded in a typical dream pop kind of style that bonds more with the music by Cocteau Twins than his debut album as the ambient and minimalism dimensions have been considerably reduced or replaced by more traditional music structure. Some suggest that theese compositions may have been recorded or composed while Guthrie played in Cocteau Twins, meaning more than a decade earlier, which also explains the closer connection to the soundscape of his former band. And I do believe there's a point in that - also when referring to his most recent releases and the fact that only three months succeeding this, he released an ep Everlasting (Jul. 2006) with music that both contain compositions of multi-layering dream pop style and tracks that are like ambient minimalist structure making the narrow 4-track ep extremely incoherent but nevertheless all instrumentals with Guthries' fingerprints all over - despite the strong incoherency - like a couple of old "leftovers" and two new compositions. Anyway, several songs on Continental follow the structure of the title track by starting off as pure ambient compositions but then advance into more uptempo patterns with drum programming and even some vocal harmonies thrown in, although, without actual lyrics. Track #5. "Amphora" and track #9. "Last Exit" are the exceptions sounding more like outtakes from his debut, and track #6. "The Day Star" is another exception by being noise rock and / or post rock-styled as something influenced by Sigur Rós or Mogwai with a progressive beat and swirling distorted guitars as culmination.
All in all, Continental is a much more diverse collection of songs but also more digestible than Guthrie's previous minimalist and almost new age and ambient exercises.
Recommended.
[ allmusic.com 3,5 / 5 stars ]
