More Songs About The Sun

The newest Pye Corner Audio album came out ten days ago and in some ways it works as the flipside to yesterday's post, Boards Of Canada's Inferno. More Songs About The Sun was timed to release with the summer equinox and just as with the gloom and end of days song titles of Inferno, Pye Corner Audio's track titles promise something more optimistic- hope and renewal- with Euphoria, Greet The Dawn, Rays Of Sunshine, As We Begin and My Shimmer all offering positivity. 

Andy Bell appears (again) providing guest guitar on four tracks. Album opener Euphoria fades in with sunlit analogue synth sounds and vibrato and then some distorted chord changes- cosmische and indeed euphoric. A drum machine patters into life and the floating becomes more propulsive. Third track in is Cycle, one with Andy Bell, the thrum of drums and bass, cosmische guitar, epic synth chord changes and a blissed out vocal. 

In the past Pye Corner Audio has made much more dystopic sounding tracks, subterranean ambient, inflected with a similar hauntology to where some of Boards Of Canada's sounds are coming from but on More Songs About The Sun, he's very much heading towards the light. Ambient shoegaze, radiophonic workshop vibes, modular synths. Eight Thousand Years has a rhythm part that blips and blops beautifully accompanied by chord change straight out of West Germany in the 1970s. 

On The Breath Of Now Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin gives a spoken word performance, low key and soft, 'no heroes come out at night', and a moment where the album has some shade to contrast with the light. 

The final four tracks form a serene ending with Rays Of Sunshine giving way to As We Begin (another one with Andy Bell and his guitar), a warm drone offset by distant chord changes and keys. Echoes of My Bloody Valentine's string bending/ head rush sensation. The drums kick in and synths and guitars suddenly switch to sounding all golden. My Shimmer is three minutes of ambient wonder, layers of drones, chords and notes, a choral finale, and we're left to come down with the fifty seven seconds of Blooms Fade, recognising that in nature all things must pass, the seasons change the end of summer, the cycle continues, the autumn equinox must surely follow. For the moment though, 1st July, More Songs About The Sun is exactly what this summer needs. 

More Songs About The Sun is out now on Sonic Cathedral and can be found at Bandcamp, available digitally, on CD and in an array of gorgeously packaged and presented vinyl versions.