The 10″ vinyl series from the Welsh record label Serein started with Colorlist’s wonderful ‘The Fastest Way To Become The Ocean’ followed by Donato Wharton’s ‘A White Rainbow Spanning The Dark’. The lately released third part of the series has been Nest’s new record called ‘Body Pilot’. This collaborative project founded by label head Huw Roberts and Otto Totland who is one half of Deaf Center actually already delivered the first CD album of the Serein imprint, ‘Retold’. Their newest masterpiece contains four pieces of sheer beauty!
Again Roberts and Totland find a perfect balance between droning elements and the solo piano parts. Side A starts with ‘Stillness’, that is as minimalistic as it has to be. The melodies are built on one single chord and don’t use more than three different tones mostly. Nevertheless this opening piece unfolds a wondrous beauty and elegance that leads through the complete 10″. ‘The Dying Roar’ sounds like a church bell cluster that is used for the background drone that slowly fades out (or to say it with Nest’s own words: it dies) to offer some space for the solo piano that plays a short supplement. Side B starts with ‘Koretz’s Meteor’, that has a beautiful tape flutter by the way. This piece is a decently droning composition built with soundscapes full of warmth, while ‘The Ultimae Horizon’ – the final piece of the record – uses some much colder sound elements reminding me of Thomas Köner a bit. Regarding their former release, the four pieces of ‘Body Pilot’ aren’t as melodic as the Nest works used to be before. Anyway they have been able to form a stylistic similarity that makes the listener remembering the sound of their first album, obtained certainly – but not exclusively – due to the piano parts. However Nest might continue their collaborative project, the path of development that they chose between ‘Retold’ and ‘Body Pilot’ has definitely been the correct one to form this elegant minimalism and I really hope that they continue working on that direction. For me one of the best records this year so far – and this year already has been really strong so far!
‘Body Pilot’ is a wonderful cohesive 10″ record that also is a wonderful sequel to the Colorlist and Donato Wharton contributions to the series. A forth record should follow later this year, if I remember right. I’ll be sure to keep my series complete then!
[ 4,8 / 5 ]
