Cassette Review // Melquiades "Keep A Seed" (Canigou Records)

£8 //

Edition of 50 //

https://canigourecords.bandcamp.com/album/keep-a-seed // 

This opens up sounding like a video game but then has these guitar strum type chords dropping down into it.    It fades into just these dreamy guitar strums but then switches into what sounds more like a live sound with people talking behind it.   I cannot tell if it's being played in public or is simply the music with the audio clip (a field recording) sampled into it.   A wild acoustic guitar now.   Sad strings.    It has a definite folk feel, if you think about it like Simon & Garfunkel.   

A flute sound can be heard now and begins to feel more like LOTR.   It flutters a dreamy dream now.   It takes off and fades out before the next song comes in with a closer to electric sounding version of acoustic strums.    Much like the score to a film, it is just building and building now.  It can take on such a life of its own and the distortion has the speakers trembling.

The guitar notes begin to just really take off now, in a classical way.   It's a rambling sound, a drifting.   While it can grow so intense, it can also feel just so soft and delicate.    There is a hue which is starting and stopping now, growing and shrinking and then it finally comes through full blast with wavy, distorted tones to back it up.   In a small way it sounds like an airplane taking off only trapped inside a loop rather than actually a straight line.   Tones reign down like thunder.  Jet streams paint the oblivion.  

As the static feels like a storm there is a rapid fire tapping as well.   We curve and bend.   This pattern continues on a loop, much like a broken swing.   Tones come through now like a distorted melody and it has just grown louder, yet somehow more like a lullaby at the same time.   A sad drone, like the ocean, and then back into that curving, bending loop from before.  

A more upbeat acoustic sound now, just some guitar notes and chords playing along.   A quiet sense of it now, as it feels like waves coming through in bursts.   A chanting now, an ohm, behind this electric build of synths.   

Pleasant, dreamy guitar notes and chords open up the flip side.   It feels like radio stations changing, then percussion, then something magical becomes a carousel ride.     As the sound swirls around in a hue now it makes me think of how closely related a drone and a loop can be.    It definitely still has that carousel feel to it though, like we're off at the races.    This becomes a new song  now, a wavy drone, slightly distorted, seemingly just enough to cause the speakers to shake.

It waves on now, somewhat picking up where that carousel idea left off.   Then it just sort of fades out.    An acoustic guitar riff now picks up the pace and makes things feel like a lighter-hearted indie film.   This has a nice little solo acoustic vibe to it and then it turns into electronic guitar notes which do, admittedly, feel like they could be part of a carnival.    Laser shots are fired in the background like some kind of synth from space.    It feels like a lighter singing now, but jumbled and then it goes into a deeper singing like a moan.  

Tones like an accordion fade in and out now, but only briefly and only ever so slightly.    The next sound you hear is a click which feels like the record button being pressed and then this impressive melody of acoustic guitar notes emerges.    Now deeper tones come in like a video game and then drop off.    Another tone now is added into this mix and it makes it feel haunted.    And now the organs come in as well, to fully make me feel like this is an 8bit theme for The Undertaker on some old WWF video game being sampled.  

On some level I thought this was beginning to sound like death, but it seems to have perked up now and I'm feeling more like it is sounding like new life.   A kind of psych sitar comes in before beeps drop off like lasers.  I feel like this is singing but it also has that violin sound before dramatic strings come in to make you feel like you're floating on clouds or part of a soap opera.    The tones come through once again with a fun, almost post rock feeling, which feels like the only fitting end.