Ian William Craig - Centres


Ian William Craig
Centres
2016
Spotify

Haunting, engrossing, fascinating; all are words that can be used to describe Ian William Craig's new LP Centres, an album that many are calling his magnum opus. Craig almost takes a page out of James Blake's book but He pushes the music so much further taking risk after risk that eventually pays off. Craig has an incredible amount of patience on this record allowing it to build slowly, letting each track move organically where it will. It is almost as if the song is being born right there in front of you for the very first time. This makes the album really difficult to separate into tracks. Though they sound distinct and wholly their own the entire record never lets up, it never gives you a moment to reestablish yourself in it. It is almost as if you caught the wave of the record and the only two options are ride it out, or bail. Riding it however means hearing and feeling beautiful things all around you. "Drifting to Void on All Sides" clearly has a heavy spacial influence and further that idea of simply floating along. I've brought up the James Blake comparison earlier, and it is really evident on "The Nearness" but while Ian William Craig's voice does not have that visceral nature that Blake's does, He still sounds absolutely beautiful. It's not all sunshine and roses however. A track like "Power Colour Spirit Animal" is aggressive and disorienting. It shows that ambient music is not just what you hear in a doctors office while you wait.

Throughout most of the album Craig's classically trained voice does not have any effect on it. However the first track, and the real powerhouse of the record, we hear him with a great deal of vocal distortion. It's almost as if He wanted to let us know from the onset that you can't expect anything with this album, because almost anything is possible. It feels almost like a more refined and restrained version of Radiohead, so much of the quality of sound but not the raw power. That may be the one thing that you can level against Craig is that for an album with so much build there is very little release. Craig takes you to these heights and you are dying to jump off the edge with him, but He doesn't allow it, He keeps his listeners floating, safe yet uneasy. "An Ocean Only You Can See" is where we really get in to some real time wasting. That song and the next seem to just go on and on into infinity, clearly creating a vibe but also being so slow that it is hard to stay with it. While the soundscapes are rich that He is creating, when there is no vocal you tend to get a bit lost in the musical mist. The final third of the album is it's most ambient, almost entirely devoid of singing. It makes you long for the earlier, perhaps more special moments of the record. Centres is something really special, and while it may take some patience to truly appreciate, you'll be very happy you did.

8.4 out of 10

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