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7 out of 10
Edinburgh based painter and musician Harold Nono has worked with experimental classical composer Hidekazu Wakabayashi and the equally out there German artist Me Raabenstein, but on this, his fourth record, it was an almost entirely solo effort. Bar a string quartet on 'A Bigger Spider' and a drummer on 'Tacky Tigers', every sound and idea we hear on 'To The River Lounge' is from Nono.
And sometimes the ideas he has are original, unusual and difficult. 'A Shining Space' is full of odd, crackling bubbles containing inside them indecipherable children's voices. Occasionally the bubbles pop with a sound like bones ripping. It's a quite unsettling musical experience, as is 'A Bigger Spider' which just sounds like something bad is happening but you don't know what because it's too dark. Graveyards and bloodshed are probably involved and it's way scarier than 'Cloverfield'. The dark Disney of 'Tacky Tigers', 'Lullaby's' overwhelming electronica and 'Gambol', which is like post-rock played in binary with it's heavy hum and cymbal splashes building forever into nothing, are hardly easy listening either.
Interspersed with those moments though, are the kind of strange and beautiful soundscapes like 'Rain' and 'Lightbox' which have been floating over from Iceland for nearly 15 years now, and 'Waterspeakers' is ambient nothingness: when does minimalism become so that there's nothing there? But when he not so much goes outside the box as scares it to death, Harold Nono is alone in his field.
Listen: www.myspace.com/haroldnono
Tracklist:
1. Lullaby
2. A Shining Space
3. Rain
4. Waterspeakers
5. Gambol
6. A Third Of Birds
7. Tacky Tigers
8. A Bigger Spider
9. Kite
10. Lightbox
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