Maths Balance Volumes - Cycles of Tonight

T'was the season! Were it not for the now customary customs hold ups, Maths Balance Volumes' latest LP would have arrived right on cue on the eve of Halloween. As it stands, we'll remain haunted after the fact, which appropriately enough translates as an accurate understanding of this mercurial Minnesotan outfit. As on previous record A Year Closer, Cycles of Tonight feels like an anachronistic assemblage of sound and song transmitted from the outskirts, the shadows of time built into its DNA, part Smithsonian folk memory, part experimental subversion. The kind of ooze you might find trapped in the invisible cogs that turn the shared gears of Warm Currency, Eyes of the Amaryllis and Idea Fire Company, an outgrowth, if you like, of the uncharted purgatory between those equally spectral acts. For all their experimental probing, melody still underpins all that makes Maths Balance Volumes great, it's just it's often hidden under a few layers of mulch, as if digging their hands through soil to dredge out the song. Not quite Carrie coming up out of the earth, but there's something down there alright. There's a lot of history buried in the land. If it could talk, this is what it might tell. Perhaps avoid saying it in the mirror times, though.