Roll The Dice / In Dust
CD / Digital
Leaf Label / Released September 2011
What does it sound like?
If there was an award for Best Soundtrack To Imagined Soviet Animations then Roll The Dice could well take home the glory. Tracks are called stuff like Calling All Workers and Idle Hands, and these piano-led arrangements showcase such deft and delicate handiwork the results are somewhat comparable to a finely detailed, hand-drawn cartoon. Furthermore, such slight notes give way to more powerful electric hums and deep mechanical ambience (The Suck), as if reflective of man’s position beneath the nation-machine of archetypal communist imagery.
OK, so the album is out on the Leeds-based Leaf Label, and the artists responsible come from Stockholm. But when the aural picture painted is this vivid it’s difficult to remove the sounds from that (irrational but immediate) applied context, a point that needs to be followed up with a comment commending RTD for creating such evocative soundscapes. Each is at once blissful and uncertain, bridging the gap between instrumental thriller soundtrack (the tense Cause & Effect), and celebratory electronica (See You Monday‘s high-pitched buzz-hook set to ascending ivory scales being precisely the right way to wake up in a positive mood). The results make for a unique experience that wears eccentricity on its sleeve, while nodding towards King of Woolworths.
Where would I dance to it?
In a colour-rich world of vividly realised characters on a production line, or anywhere whilst dreaming.
What highlights can I expect to hear?
Earlier references to moving images weren’t for nought, or at least that’s what we like to think. Like any good, intimate narrative piece each scene, or rather track, is best heard after the previous, and before the next. With that in mind choosing one in particular would be unwise, though Dark Thirty‘s title belies the airy chime and string filled beauty the score offers, so that’s certainly one title to remember.
Why should I pay for it?
Because there are few people that won’t enjoy listening to where your money has been invested.
Where can I buy it?
Juno.
