Review Summary: Great downtempo/ambient/psybient/psychill/*enter elitist genre here* album that is both sublime and beautiful. Must hear.
Celtic Cross was one of the earlier projects of Simon Posford (Shpongle, Younger Brother, Hallucinogen, etc.) and
Hicksville has always been one of my favorites among his parade of instant classics. (As you can tell, Im not a fanboy...) Anyway, along on the team he brought Saul Davies (James, Watershed) and Martin Glover (Youth, The Orb and a plethora of other groups). Under what I assume was Simon's firm but gentle leadership they created something quite unique. What is that? It's a celtic insipired downtempo/ambient album that's captures the vibe without sounding pretentious. On every other celtic-electronic musical album, I imagine some fiery readhead with milky white skin, walking barefeet in the mountains or lush green plains, the wind blowing her hair and flapping gown - illustrating how "natural and celtic" this music truly is. None of that here tho. Rather it's a mix sound that goes from the calm and sublime (for instance Louden) to the more uptempo finale Darshannon. A bit of guitar here, the voice of Timothy Leary there. This album is a journey through at psychedelic landscape with celtic imagry popping up now and then. If you are familiar with Simon's other work, you will definitely recognize the "Posford touch" in this album too. His disctint sound is there, but the overall feel is a little bit different for most his other work. Many of the wonderful wub-adubs also has Youths signature on them and I think it's hard to decipher the distinctive parts of songs to a particular individual, it's a collaboration afterall. You can also hear some of the dynamic that is part of Posford and Glovers later group, Dub Trees.
If you get your hands on this album you will not be disappointed. And hopefully you will find a beautiful introspective journey, just like I do. If you like; good ambient, guitar, psychedelic music, alternation between highs and lows, the fast and slow, bleeps and more, this is just the album for you!
Enjoy!
Peace out,
Nammai
