Review: Slow Six – Tomorrow Becomes You

Slow Six – Tomorrow Becomes You
Western Vinyl 2010

[tags: post rock?, electronic, dreamy, orchestral, 2010]

Listen while reading:

These Rivers Between Us (excerpt) (from Tomorrow Becomes You) download it!

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One month earlier and I maybe wouldn’t have done a review on music like Tomorrow Becomes You by Brooklyn, New York based band Slow Six which just recently released their third full length album via Western Vinyl. But the experience I had with Nils Frahm’s Wintermusik changed me and now I start discovering music I did not listen to for some reason – best example for this is the fascinating debut album Docile by Peter Broderick which I had ignored for too long. Simple acoustic piano music – dreamy and very emotional.

But let’s not drift away from the real topic of this article, the new Slow Six album. The first lines maybe gave you the impression, that Slow Six also play acoustic piano music, but this isn’t the case. I just mentioned that because the neo-classical character of the above mentioned albums can also be found in Tomorrow Becomes You. The execution is totally different though and one can easily say that post rock may be the right tag to classify the music in a first step. But everytime I hear post rock I have to think of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and that’s not quite the best compare to Slow Six for they don’t sound as apocalyptical but more often dreamy and floating.

The best example for this dreamy and floating sound are the magnificent tracks Cloud Cover (Part 1) and Cloud Cover (Part 2). Over 12 minutes of pure beauty leave you breathless yet relaxed. Especially Part 2 is very introverted and calm. But this serenity doesn’t describe the whole record, even though tracks like Because Together We Resonate are very near to the sound of Cloud Cover (Part 2). I’m talking of the more aroused aspects of Slow Six that you find realized for example in The Night You Left New York with more orchestration and sonority and therefore a more epic sound or in These Rivers Between Us with enhanced electronic influences but also highly orchestral sound.

Somehow I see parallels to one of the last Western Vinyl albums I reviewed (Sleep Whale – Houseboat) – no stylistic parallels but structural ones. Sleep Whale combined elements of folk with instrumental electronic sound and Slow Six combines the instrumental electronic sound with neo-classical string arrangements and rock features (see Sympathetic Response System (Part 1)). The result of both bands cannot be more different, but one thing unites them: the uniqueness of their music – at least for me – and it shows once more, as I also said in the review for Houseboat, that Western Vinyl has a knack for releasing great music form very dfferent genres.

As I’m not quite a connoisseur of post rock or however you want to call Slow Six’ music, I can’t name bands playing a similar style. But what I can say is, that I’m really surprised of how great Tomorrow Becomes You works for me and I’m sure this one will be a lasting reminder of the musical year 2010. But one thing is not quite to my taste: the mp3 sample Western Vinyl provides, for it doesn’t capture the character of the album in the best way (apart from that it is just an excerpt). Keep this in mind and really give Tomorrow Becomes You a few listens and feel it grow on you.

To buy the CD version, directly visit Western Vinyl’s shop and additionally spend some time on Slow Six’ MySpace for another sample from the album (The Night You Left New York) and head over to their personal homepage for any further information.