One for those souvlaki space cadets (Souvlaki - Slowdive)

Member Name: hulahoop

Product:	Souvlaki - Slowdive
Date:	12/09/00 (122 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: beautiful

Disadvantages: chilling (brrrr)

From the late 80's came Slowdive, seemingly typical of artists of that generation producing music associated with dream pop, indie and shoegazers. They formed in 1989 in Reading, producing a kind of trance-pop sound that gave them respect and a great CV of music. Slowdive's music generally has a slow, dense feel about it, induced by distorted guitars and ethereal vocals from Rachel Goswell. They were signed to Creation in UK and SBK in the US, and despite problems with SBK they went on to produce relatively successful records. But their success would never equal their talent.

'Souvlaki', following the LP 'Just for a day', works around the idea of pure sound, with overwhelming long rifts and distortion that can be either uplifting or melancholy. The album starts positively with a wash of guitars, strengthened by the entrancing vocals provided by Neil Halstead, with Rachel Goswell in the backing. The melody swurves up and down leading onto an equally captivating second track, with the unlikely name of 'Machine gun', which is soothing and uplifting. Brian Eno gives 'treatments and keyboards' to the songs 'Sing' and 'Here she comes', on which he is said to have had a large amount of influence. Various parts of it show signs of his own elevator-music style, adding an intriguing aspect to the songs. I also think he adds an element of beauty to 'Sing' with his rather exotic effects.

'Souvlaki' is seen as much more of a 'band' album than 'Pygmalion' simply because it is easy to separate performers within the music. 'Pygmalion' is made more hypnotic by the fact that it is rather inhuman, and almost seems to produce itself. The use of drums is more obvious on 'Souvlaki', as is the sound of the individual instruments, the guitar being less processed and distorted than on 'Pygmalion'.

I find the two difficult to compare because they are so d
ifferent sounding, but I have never got tired with either.

Look out for rarer EPs and singles by them:
'Slowdive' ; 'Morningrise' ; 'Blue Day' ; '5EP' ; 'Holding Our Breath' ; 5EP (in mind remixes) ; 'Outside your room'

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