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Title: All Standing Room In The Goodnight Saloon
Artist: Autoclav1.1
Genre: Electronic
Release Date: 9th November 2010
Label: Tympanik Audio


Album Review

A new year, a new release of AUTOCLAV1.1! It’s already the third album in 3 years that bears the hallmarks of Tony Young’s emotional songwriting. He’s been excitingly busy ever since he joined Tympanik Audio in 2008 for the landmark release ‘Love No Longer Lives Here’. There’s no need for psychic powers to anticipate nothing short of a trench full of protean melancholy textures that trigger anything from exhilaration to sadness, and one’s not being disappointed on starting the initial listen of ‘All Standing Room In The Goodnight Saloon’ with ‘Waxing’. There could be no better title for that track since you can’t rid the feeling that every layer that is applied, no matter if it’s a melody or a rhythm loop, is meant to seal an emotion that in essence and purity only can be grasped by diving straight to the bottom of the lake. In a reversed loop is caged what is soon hitting the listener with an abrupt immediacy which conveys a sense of uncertainty, like towards a message hidden in a ‘Sealed Envelope’ as to how its content could affect your life and if you should open it at all.

‘Conquer This Perception’ breaks with a straight, harsh momentum, the harshness generated by a rougher production on the drum patterns, but moreover by the distorted screams of Claus Larsen which hardly leave any chance for interpretation of the words he’s speaking. It’s all one big distorted scream, a train transporting one specific emotion, and it is where we’re coming full circle again with the track title. Let us ascend now, taking each and every of ‘Saturday’s Steps’ now, having the echoes of our feet getting thrown back from imaginary walls, while a sustained voice transcends back into present on a vaguely familiar piano line. The underground keeps altering on our way up to whatever place or truth lies at the end of this staircase, but the final revelation is being kept for your fantasy and the outcome changes as backgrounds tend to do. That, which is written on the inside of the booklet starts ‘This Town’ “This is a fictional slumber” which might have us argue if what we perceive as reality is actually real, or if that sentence is just a hint at an insomniac putting himself into a subconscious state that resembles sleeping, as paradox as it sounds, and this is the trigger to get back.

That, of course, would lead us away from the music, in this case taking on a messy, washed shape with the muddy guitars running over the beat for a while, giving post-punkish feel to a song that at various points sounds like a synthetic reality put over an acoustic one, wherein somebody just keeps stroking the strings of the guitar before everything eventually blends. What follows now can only be called masterful, and that goes for each of the 3 remaining pieces, staring with ‘Some Subtle Inebriation’ wherein the rhythm’s been condensed to the simplest of beat loops with only little alterations and occasions to being more than that. The result is almost numbing waves of bliss and texturized melancholy spreading all through the body, for once shutting down the barriers that keep you from experiencing a seldom moment of clarity that might become the most painful in your life. The German-titled ‘Alleine in der Dunkelheit’ (Alone in the Dark) is the lonely heart beating in the abyss of life, unable to decide if that’s the place it belongs to or one to break free from. In its choice of sounds and the assemblage of atmospheres it’s on par with some of the stand-out tracks on ‘Love No Longer Lives Here’.

Closing chapter ‘This is for Love’ offers a conciliating ending in spending hope; in embracing the hope given by a new love one might have been lucky enough to find in these times of isolation. Even more than its predecessors, ‘All Standing Room In The Goodnight Saloon’ needs time, time to tell its story to the very end and for the listener not to make any judgement before they know all episodes and perspectives it gives. It is a story of love, disappointment, uncertainty, loneliness and hope. It’s a story called life…


Tracklist


01. Waxing - 4:53
02. Sealed Envelope - 5:00
03. Conquer This Perception - 4:36
04. The In Road - 4:31
05. Saturday's Steps - 4:14
06. Let Me Sleep (Somewhere) - 4:02
07. There's No More Isolation - 4:40
08. This Town - 3:51
09. Some Subtle Inebriation - 4:35
10. Alleine in der Dunkelheit - 4:49
11. This Is For Love - 4:01


Line-Up

Tony Young - All Music & Production


Website

http://www.myspace.com/autoclav


Cover Picture




Rating


Music: 9
Sound: 9
Extras: -
Total: 9 / 10


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