Title: Plains of the Purple Buffalo
Artiste: *Shels
Genre: Post-Rock/Post-Metal
Familiarity: Zero
1. Journey to the plains: This appears to be structured around a Native American vision or something? Anyway it starts deceptively soft then bursts into life, sounds pretty metal I must say, with the guttural roars, though I do dig it, especially the guitar work. I'm really impressed with that start.
2. Plains of the purple buffalo (part 1): The shorter of the two parts; very ethereal, atmospheric, ambient. Nice change of pace.
3. Plains of the purple buffalo (part 2): Blasting out of the gate for part 2 with some powerful guitar and .... actual decipherable vocals! Oh yeah. Like this. Really evocative. Love the melody that builds from about the midpoint. Superb. The choir is immense. The solo trumpet is amazing, and then the way it slowly builds back up just blows me away. Wonderful.
4. Searching for Zihuatenejo: Sort of like a hymn now, very low and reverent, music is minimal --- oh, exploding now into a big guitar anthem. Lovely!
5. Vision quest: This has a gorgeous slow, stately, not quite funereal but close pace, really moving and emotional.
6. Atoll: Another short little choral/instrumental
7. Butterflies (on Luci's way): Powerful, anthemic, slower than the previous tracks (except for “Vision quest”) with some amazing guitar work and a beautiful melody that's almost folk/native in feel. Stops completely after the sixth minute. Silence. Is it coming back in on reprise? I now hear a solitary guitar joined by a vocal and I guess yeah, it's going to reprise. Other voices joining now in a sort of barbershop thing. ****ing superb. Big vocal chorus now, with still two minutes to go. Percussion now and full band and we're off. If there was a rating I could give higher than True Love, this would get it in a heartbeat.
8. Crown of eagle feathers: Another powerful anthem with this time those death growls that greeted us at the beginning of the album. Very effective really.
9. Bastien's angels: Very ambient and laidback for about half the track, then it screeches in on a big guitar and vocal chorus, slowly marching along. I doubt anything on this album is going to be other than Green at the very worst.
10. Conqueror: Gorgeous little picked acoustic guitar, soft vocal, then it kicks up on booming percussion
11. The spirit horse: Really powerful song that takes a little while to get going but doesn't disappoint when it does.
12. Waking: A beautiful piece of abstract music, totally ambient, just so lush.
13. Leaving the plains: And a fantastic powerful instrumental to close a fantastic album.
End result: This album was totally phenomenal! As most of you know, I'm never that gone on instrumental albums; I'll listen to them and enjoy them but they're hard to review. This just took my breath away. Ki, you like post-rock: you should listen to this if you haven't already. It would be right in your wheelhouse I feel.
So, Love or Hate? You know what's coming, surely? It could be nothing less than a
True Love for this.