Dig yourself in because this is gonna be a long one. A long one but a feast of the senses for all post-rock aficionados. This is actually one half of Massachusetts band Caspian’s debut EP ‘You Are The Conductor’. It can be found amongst other gilt edged instrumental gems on the Lost Children net label (‘The Silent Ballet, Volume One’). ‘Quovis’, ‘Further Up’ and ‘Further Out’ compliment each other well, the seamless segue helps of course but this mini compilation places Caspian in the premier league of rocks instrumentalists. The final assault may lose some of the melodic grandeur of the opening sequences but this is not Hollywood and sometimes happy endings spoil listener returnability. Caspian’s debut album ‘The Four Trees’ is almost upon us and will probably go some way to making sure that ‘All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone’ won’t have it all its own way this year. KD
Caspian – Quovis/Further Up/Further In
More Info: Official & Myspace
Buy Album: [UK] You Are the Conductor [US] You Are the Conductor
Year: 2005
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FYI- Dopamine just launched the pre-order campaign for Caspian’s new record, “The Four Trees.” Order by March 27 and you get a bonus poster and FREE SHIPPING in the USA. The record ships around March 28 so you’ll likely receive it beofre it hits stores on April 10th. You can order it now at http://www.dopamine-records.com
I’ve been anticipating The Four Trees for months now. So, when the band (foolishly?) revealed on their website that the album had been leaked in it’s entirety, I couldn’t resist finding a preview copy to tide me over until its European release date!Well, I had been so blown away by the combination of Quovis, Further Up and Further Out on the You Are the Conductor EP, that I may have approached this with my expectations too high. I was hoping to find a genuine challenge to EITS’ dominance of the genre. Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite amount to such. While it is a very good album by any standards, the guitar melodies are just too simplistic to even come close to the degree of elation that is inspired by EITS’ last 2 releases.All in all, a satisfying post-rock record that compares favourably to EITS’ early work, but is vastly overshadowed by All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone. I can only hope that Caspian will continue to grow and develop melodically on subsequent releases. They promise so much, but have not quite delivered, yet…