EXCLUSIVE DINKED EDITION - Transparent blue vinyl - unique LP insert with illustrated & signed artwork by Jason Dungan plus bonus track download, hand-numbered edition, limited pressing of 300
BLUE LAKE PLAYS LIVE IN-STORE AT WOE ON RELEASE DATE - 3RD OCTOBER. The first 30 pre-orders of The Animal secures your space at the in-store. One ticket per copy. Space is limited!
The gentle evolution of Blue Lake has been a joy to witness. Over the course of six albums written and recorded in a relatively short period of time, Jason Dungan's increasingly ambitious project has moved from off-kilter improv through ECM-styled pastoral jazz into a kind of post-rock-informed bucolic Reichian ambi-pop. On Blue Animal, an all acoustic multi-instrument affair featuring six different players and the project's first use of the human voice, Dungan and his group are arguably at their most rich and realised yet. This is a consciously collaborative effort, easily apparent in ten slowly unfolding, joyfully performed compositions that harness a springtime zeal in their cascading confluence of strings and woodwind. The previous two albums have, I believe, stated a spiritual connection to 90s Chicago - Sam Prekop/Gastr Del Sol/The Sea and Cake et al - and it's an influence that continues here but feels one step advanced, the arrangements increasingly complex and layered, but most distinctly, emotionally driven, analogous to some mystic communion between Laaraji, Robbie Basho and Jim O'Rourke. Dungan describes the approach as born from a spirit of togetherness, and there really is a sense of mutual understanding at play, too skilled to be called effortless, but certainly felt as much as it is thought. As such, it's an astonishingly cohesive work, though particular praise should be given to mid-album highpoint 'Strand', a piece that builds from repeated guitar figures and arcing strings into a dramatic, unfurling finale that suggests that it's probably only a matter of time before Dungan scores his first film (I'm loathe to use the word 'cinematic', but you take my point) and the choral harmonising that directly follows it on the title track. Whether you consider this the best Blue Lake album yet is your own decision to make, though to these ears, it's easily the most impressive.
FFO: The Sea & Cake, Gastr Del Sol, Josiah Steinbrick, Flaer, Laaraji, Robbie Basho
