Somehow this Flying Saucer Attack fan never spent enough time with Movietone, the band which featured Rachel Brook from that group. Along with Kate Wright (Crescent), Brook made music that was unearthly in its mood. Called slowcore by some, the tracks on the newly-reissued Day and Night from Domino seem like the progenitors of stuff like Modern Nature, and the heirs of a legacy of sound birthed by Nick Drake and early Pink Floyd as well.
Opener "Sun Drawing" is ruminative, a stretch towards meaning, while the elegiac "Summer" wraps itself around the faintest of melodies. Even better is "Useless Language", a track which works itself up into a modest frenzy but still sounds like a tune being played in the distance, or one barely remembered.
All the material on this Domino reissue of Day and Night is stark and perfectly realized. I cannot believe that I never spent time with this record before given how much it sounds like the blueprint for everything I love about Modern Nature now. Day and Night is expanded here with "Phonograph Space" being one of the highlights of the bonus material. A wisp of a track, it is, like everything on this Movietone record, haunting in the right way, and utterly and uniquely timeless music.
Day and Night by Movietone is out now via Domino.
[Photo: Movietone]