Originally posted in Love or Hate? November 6 2015
Title: The Door Behind the Door
Artist: The Black Ryder
Genre: Shoegaze
Familiarity: Zero
1. Babylon: Nice kind of dark, introspective instrumental, good start.
2. The Seventh Moon: Oh good holy ****! Is that the voice of a sultry angel or what? I think I'm in love! Song's massive too. A real laid-back powerful lament which just drips emotion. I love this.
3. The Going Up Was Worth the Coming Down: Another beautiful dreamy track, but with a male vocal this time. Almost as good as the female. Though not quite. The sort of backwards masked cello (?) at the end is immense. Nearly pushed this to a Blue.
4. Let Me Be Your Light: Oh she's back with a sort of, well, shoegaze vocal I guess; quite muddy at times, just adds to the attraction in this case. Love everything so far. Hear elements of Mostly Autumn here certainly.
5. Santaria: And another beautiful track with some Edge (U2)-like guitar in it; sort of puts me in mind of “With Or Without You”...
6. Throwing Stones: Beautiful (seems I'm using that description a lot here; ya man ya bob!*) acoustic song with herself on vocals again. She sounds a little different here, not quite as ethereal as on the first track, more kind of earthbound than angelic. Still beautiful though. There I go again! Sublime gospel feel to this.
7. All That We Are: All right; running out of superlatives now. Think I'll just relax and listen to this. Oh, this sounds very 21st century Marillion. Lovely. Oh good ****ing god! Lush organ! There surely can't be anything on this that I don't love?
8. Until the Calm of Dawn: Cello? I'm fainting with pleasure here. This album could replace sex, it really could. The mechanised vocal fits in so well. I'm actually delighted to see that the last track is twelve minutes long, and I don't often say that!
9. Le dernier Sommeil (The Final Sleep): Oh my god. How do you make music sound like the sun rising? I don't know, but these guys have managed it. Almost spiritual. This is actually drawing tears, it's so moving and gorgeous. Shut up Batty: you'd be crying too if you heard it. Is this twelve minutes of orchestral instrumental? A third of the way so far and no vocal. Yet. I kind of hope there is none, it might break the fragile spell this track is weaving over me. I've not words enough to describe how awe-inspiringly sumptuous and moving this is. I feel like I felt when I first heard Hospice. Thank god; it was all instrumental. It's a long time since anything has moved me so profoundly.
End result: If more shoegaze (if this is shoegaze) was like this I would want to hear much more of it. As usual though, seems these guys only have two albums, but thanks a bunch for turning me on to them, bob. Loved every single damn moment of this album, from first note to last.
So, Love or Hate? Oh wow, I don't know. Hard one! Yeah, we're back on track, bob. A True Love if ever there was one. Superb is not praise strong enough, if such exists.
Rating: 9.9999999/10 (Only one point less because it would have to be Blue-rated all the way to achieve that, and this has some Green in it)
* Love or Hate? was a thread in which people recommended albums to me and I listened to them and then gave my reaction. This was recommended by bob.
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