Ex-Easter Island Head

In meteorology, the word Norther refers to a cold wind that blows down from the North. For Ex-Easter Island Head, it?s also an apt title for the strange and multi-faceted sound of their new album, their first since 2016, which drifts from billowing clouds of melancholy to propulsive hypnotic headwinds. Years in the making and crafted in their home studio housed within the former Brazilian consulate in Liverpool, the music is an ever shifting thrum of sounds, both acoustic and electronic, which appears to teem and squirm, yet which moves as part of one mighty breeze. Building on over a decade of activity, Ex-Easter Island Head have long been a cherished part of the UK underground. Functioning variously as a kind of deconstructed rock band, ambient chamber ensemble and minimalist compositional workshop, on 'Norther' we find the group combining their wide musical experience into something singular and coherent with a deeply emotional core. Largely orbiting around their extended use of the electric guitar, their approach might at times recall the experiments of Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, but across the album we see a band whose musical vision extends well beyond the iconoclasm of 80's New York. Drawing on hypnotic musics from across the spectrum, they bring a compositional approach to sounds often associated with freeform sprawl or more academic settings, never letting pathos be lost to process. Equally reminiscent of the gentle rolling momentum of The Necks as they are the coiled precision of an act on Kompakt; this is a music which ebbs and flows, lives and breathes.