“&Hope Still” by Silent Land Time Machine is an excellent effort from Texan one-man band. The liner notes indicate, “SLTM is me…and many other inadvertent contributions from the Pearl St Co-op”. For an album recorded in a bedroom in the autumn of 2006 and winter of 2007-08, its production values and high level of musicianship and professionalism actually make it rather difficult to critique, except only to endorse it with high praise. First off, this record is very nicely presented and well-conceived in terms of the personalised packaging – a purplish-monochrome hued watercolour or damaged photography reel of a waterfall or an ice shelf, somehow reflecting a natural, beautiful vastness, like some of the music contained within. The insert postcard is a nice ‘souvenir’ touch, adding to the overall air of mystery surrounding this bedroom-recording Texan. The packaging and album form one impressive piece of artwork.
SLTM is a little in the vein of Four Tet, The Books and Iron and Wine – coincidently another folkrock band who now reside in Austin, Texas. It is, however, pretty hard to locate this music in terms of direct influences. The guitar and violin are certainly mainstays throughout and gel cohesively together, alongside other elements such as accordion, viola and electric slide. These are also all measured in delivery and work extremely well together. While the man behind SLTM is apparently not technically trained, he skilfully brings the best out of his instruments through simple patterns, thoughtfully adding layer upon layer. This serves in bringing slightly-muted orchestral folkrock warmth to each track. Elements of gentle electronic experimentation, sampling, buried vocals and percussion also provide real moments of joy.
Opening track, “Everything Goes to Shit”, features distant bass drum thumping as SLTM’s beautiful signature slide takes over, almost instantly breaking into one of the many enjoyable grooves on the album. “The Thing This Doesn’t Mean is Nothing” is the highlight of the album, moving seamlessly through different terrain, exploring all the while, with subtle experimentation such as the sound of children’s voices and the crumpling of paper. After building with violin and accordion, it pulls back into a really nice soft hammering-on-boards percussive groove, later featuring garbled voices from the Pearl St Co-op and rendering a semblance of community and place.
There is so much to find scattered throughout this album’s looping and layers that I have probably failed to mention some of the real highlights. It’s fairly subtle music and it’s worth mentioning that you may have to be in a “patient” mood for it. If you’re feeling kind of irritated with life in general, this music may exacerbate that tension, especially given some of the extended track times (end track, “Copperpot Topography”, at 13 minutes long, feels a little as if the album has run its course but in all fairness, redeems itself seven minutes in as it launches into more muted pounding kick drum, beautiful violin, slide, looped radio tuner samples and background vocal harmonisation). If you’re feeling properly relaxed, you can let this one in – probably best not to focus too hard on the many nuances and simply let it infuse into the background.
SLTM is (presumably) quite different from what others are doing right now, making it refreshing, exciting work. 8/10 --
Claire Keiller (12 February, 2009)
