YOUNGS, RICHARD & ANDREW PAINE - English Channel

Holed up in Glasgow, probably in a black-consumed tenement flat, Richard Youngs and Andrew Paine deliver a sacrament as they usher in the long dark night. This slow thirty-seven minute journey is a beautifully cold concern, the chilly sound of bells, spidery percussion and high tone drone giving this an emotionally barren air. Rumour has it that the vocal parts, the musical moans that drift in and out of the albums single track, were recorded blind - the music muted as the pair worked. The title is possibly a play on the word channel, the album sounding more like the séance channelling of a void rather than any underwater adventure between England and France. Although the more I think about that the surer I am that Im wrong. Like a single outstretched hand reaching out from the black of the void, Paine and Youngs cast a spell through the polycarbonate. 8/10 - Scott-Ç McKeating-Ç (20-Ç August,-Ç 2008).