Smother

Radiant drone works from Siavash Amini (Room 40, Flaming Pines, Umor Rex) and Saåad (HITD, In Paradisium) combining for the first time together in this lambent collection of field recordings, strings, guitar and synthesiser. Amini's presence is perhaps best felt in the soaring, widescreen orchestration where the real and unreal is embdedded together with no seam to recognize. Saåad proffer oblique chiming notes and guitar so smeared across the horizon it's impossible not to see the curve. Together the two styles cement gracefully in calm union. 'Dragging the Harrow' pulses a Messiaenic organ line into a blossoming filter revealing increasingly plasticine detail while choristic blooms and groaning room smother…

Live (1974). Though it seems odd that a live album could serve as a band's breakthrough release, Live shows the band clearly building upon the strengths of their previous studio albums while avoiding their excesses. Without a string section to back them up - or to smother them, depending on your thinking - the band draws more heavily on its rhythm section and on the tonal colorings of Wolstenholme's Mellotron, the latter most clearly on "The Great 1974 Mining Disaster." The rich harmonies, political content, and poignant twang of John Lees songs like "For No One" come across here with the same kind of ragged majesty as Neil Young's live work. And an epic-length "Medicine Man," unburdened of its heavy orchestral arrangement and beefed up with a newly emphasized guitar and drum parts, reveals the brawn lurking beneath the lassitude of the studio version…