Jon Collin - The Other Dead Sea

Remember this one from earlier in the year? Only a 100 copies. Disappeared straight away. Well, our man Jon Collin has done the right thing and self-re-released a record that i think will eventually become to regarded as one of his finest. Which is quite the claim, since the JC vaults appear close to endless at this point - how much music is that in the past ten years or so now? More impressive still is the quality of output, always rotating around similar themes and interests but somehow finding new intriguing modes of expression to draw you back in. The Other Dead Sea seems to unfathomably raise the bar again, in part recalling the performances Collin delivered at our fifth birthday events last year, a compelling hybridisation of wordless Celtic folk song, fervoured blues and hypnotic drones that seems almost rapturous at times. Jon Collin as religious experience? Probably a bit OTT that, but since I'm no praying man I'll settle for the version of the eternal and the divine existent in 'The Lowering's' 19 minute medley (a medley! Just how infinite is the full thing?!) and the stately arcs of 'The Honour and Glory of Whaling' and hope that guarantees absolution. Amidst such uncertainty, Jon Collin proves himself a sure thing.