For a band so enthused, intrigued, and engrossed by mixed media collage it'd seem entirely appropriate that Islet's debut full-length and our first real glimpse into the Cardiff outfit's well-oiled inner workings, Illuminated People, should represent yet another mixed media collage, albeit in audio aesthetic. And in truth, this particular composition is as unmissable as any furore-inducing Hockney veneration.
Portentous ebbs of abrasion are offset by the calming coos of Emma Daman on audaciously expansive opener Libra Man, providing an initiation that gives away little to nothing as to that which is to follow over the coming fifty-odd minutes. Again, given that the pigeonhole-quashing quartet constructed a formidable fanbase and sparked rabid obsession without whipping up any such ballyhoo and hullabaloo via contrived social media channels, this initial keeping of cards close to well-woollen chest succinctly befits Wales' bestest band in several eternities.
Psyched-out waves of guitar proceed to clatter against extravagant rhythmic battering, head yowler Mark Thomas wading into the inebriating mélange with a grimy baritone equally capable of blocking both plug and lug holes. As epic as it is an extensive introduction to precisely what Islet are bloomin' well all about, This Fortune, by contrast, having seeped onto the interweb late last year does little shocking as it shudders into what sounds like corporeal disfiguration in a torture chamber lined with reverberating cymbals and filled with Cistercian monks attempting to recite Gregorian chants atop the invigorating din. Convulsed vocals caught on highly catchy hooks render the track a standout, a single if you will, had this bunch of commotion-mongers the fervent impulse to out any more material than that which is fundamentally imperative. The raw materials with which they dabble and daub are then once again muddled and mixed on the already-mucked palette for the segueing Entwined Pines, a glorious sonnet delivered by sometime-drummer Bunter that's as resplendent as Claude's Venetian sunset and as stirringly intoxicating as the libation of the same name. Wonderfully refined vocals glide atop tremolo guitar sheen like glitter on an Olympian ice rink, before they once again skate off course with an antagonistic, Mclusky-ish breakdown bloated with wobble; a slightly predictable and perhaps erroneous deviation from a track that otherwise reeks of perfection.
Thus intermittently colours, shapes, and shades clash within the creation as on the vaguely discordant and directionless What We Done Wrong, the grammar-snubbing behemoth bloodied with hunks of guitar that fade in and out of focus, reared on a deficiency of the discernible. Daman then turns thalassic cherub on A Warrior Who Longs To Grow Herbs as she gasps and groans, aches and pains along to ideally dissonant, reverb-sodden instrumental rumble, with Filia sounds similarly hydrous, miry, Thomas' agitated yelps reminiscent of a dog with its hind leg inextricably entangled in insentient beached weed. Filling the creative space in between is pasted We Bow, a rickety acoustic shanty brimming with off-kilter rattles of snare and the record's most intricate strands of melody. The tune is then once again altered – and of course continues to do so recurrently – on the seraphic-slash-demonic-slash-free jazz schizoid chirrup of Funicular, fading out into the entrancing Shores as if in requisite necessity of respite. As evocative of Strawberry Jam-era Animal Collective as it is of Evensong, it's yet more territory charted on a transporting debut within which each track beams with luminescent gleam somewhere or other upon a vast and irradiating canvas. Illuminated People is epiphanic in the extreme; a record to convert agnostics, wayward seafarers, conventional art enthusiasts, and anyone else for that matter onto an occasionally apocalyptic, ever-erratic opus.
