Gate - Winter Songs

Winter Songs smack bang in the middle of a heatwave? Gate are here again, as incongruous as ever. Originally scheduled for release in 2019, Michael Morley's latest finally turns up on record via Italian avant outpost 8MM. All told, slow moving seems to be the approach. Three songs over forty minutes, and Morley's eternal guitar divinations as characteristically his own as ever. Winter Songs is arguably a little more closely aligned with the Dead C than most of other Gate output, loosely held suspended in that same 'anti-rock' space Morley and co have carved out for themselves the past 30 odd years. That is mostly because Morley is playing guitar here, forgoing the minimalism of recent Gate records for huge white sheets of static-y drone and delay amidst a psychedelic lo-fi stoner bliss, as much Dylan Carson as it is Roy Montgomery. Foundation shaking as ever, you can feel this one in the gut.