Oozing On The Horizon: School Of Seven Bells, Disconnect From Desire.

You’d be hard pushed to read any record review that didn’t contain one of, or variations on the following words: ethereal, ephemeral, ecstatic or euphoric. Yet you’d have to search higher than the top shelf and lower than Ladyhawke’s self-esteem to stumble across a record that embodied every last one of the overtly positive words above.

Jumping the Secret Machines mechanism before it sunk into an abyss of wallowing self-indulgence as murky as a South Wales swamp, Benjamin Curtis was more than a little fortunate to come across not one, but two bewitching voices. Both female, both equally as beautiful aesthetically as well as audibly, twins from cultures removed with such a penchant for breathy eeriness are encountered with a similar hit rate to Dappy chancing upon a “pretty young lady” taken by flappy hats whilst “searchin’ all over Facebook”. Disconnect From Desire, School Of Seven Bells’ sophomore outing following the dreamy hallucinations of debut Alpinisms, is far more emotively affecting than its entitling may suggest, Windstorm swirling about hurtling open guitar strings as dual vocal harmonies rain joyously over synthetic compressed choir harks. I L U is Portishead shooting down the M4 as a paint palette sunrise oozes over the horizon, Babelonia breezes woozily in a blur of ruthless simplicity and Heart Is Strange is Popguns squirting the chorus-soaked guitars of New Order with a viscous off-kilter pop sheen. Dust Devil sees the trio turning to the darkest depths of Krautrock, before emerging with a flourish of crescendo-clambering blips Richie Hawtin may part his curtains for, whilst slow burner Dial is almost hymnal, before a swathe of vintage Secret Machines fist pump stonerisms wade in, turning the clergy onto goblets of watered down red wine. Joviann never surpasses its sumptuous opening minutes and The Wait feels as formulaic as the periodic table, but keep those aforementioned four words lingering in the doldrums of your conscious and attempt to resist the undulating melancholy of Bye Bye Bye for a full four minutes...