Daylight

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I have to admit the Darkroom meant nothing to me until we received this, but then we’re always pleased to check out releases from Northhamptonshire’s 3rd Stone Records, home of sundry left-field pop, wayward electronica and psychedelic dance. Actually, strictly speaking, while available through 3rd Stone, Daylight is in fact the debut album on the recently-launched The Halloween Society label, a venture of neo-progsters No-Man’s Tim Bowness. Well, Bowness has certainly shown some considerable savvy with this release. Combining dark guitar rock with drum and bass is not necessarily a giant step, and certainly not a unique one. But it’s done here extremely well indeed, with deep, heavily dubbed out basslines and clattering, constantly-shifting drum and bass rhythm programming underpinning psychedelic guitar solos, ice-cold ambient soundscapes and, occasionally, blissed-out indie-kid vocals. The results are very finely crafted indeed, and create a mood of oddly lush bleakness: a mood at once oceanic and glacial. Really rather beautiful. The Halloween Society have also released a single/EP from the album, Carpetworld. Let’s hope this new label’s life is a long one.