Label: Drag City – DC584, Yoga Records – Y12 Format: Vinyl, LP, Compilation Country: US Released: Mar 2014 Genre: Electronic, Rock Style: Ambient, Acoustic, Alternative Rock, Experimental
More watery spirit music from original English eccentrics Mark and Clive Ives as Woo.
This comp of previously unreleased material from Woo originally appeared via Drag City in 2014. Collecting bits and pieces from throughout the 70s and 80s it doesn’t sound like a load of offcuts but is beautifully well arranged and flows like an album. This is tribute to the quality of their work but also to the fact that Woo are always unmistakably themselves. Plucked guitars shimmer while spectral 30s dance band clarinet circles waltzing drum machines and pastel synth tones, creating music that is full of pure-hearted charm and almost unbearably poignant. Their process is important too, playing quietly and endlessly overdubbing improvised passages. It’s this process that leads to the attractively frayed sound of the records, thick with detail but softly blurred around the edges. There are kindred spirits - the whole Eno/Penguin Cafe/Obscure Records catalogue, the soft boiled end of the Canterbury/RIO axis - but Woo are true originals. Quite possibly you know exactly what you are signing up for here, but we always need more music that’s this delicate and this strange.. (Mint / New)
Tracklist A1 First Night Nerves 1:53 A2 Satya 9:04 A3 1001 Decisions 3:36 A4 Life So Far 4:35 A5 Om Shanti 2:28 B1 Amala's Love 2:16 B2 Teddy Bears 1:26 B3 H²O 2:02 B4 Free Will 2:21 B5 Distant Consequences 2:37 B6 Acting Like A Lover 2:37 B7 Glip Glop 2:43 B8 The Garden Path 2:20 B9 Ruby 3:38
