Friday, September 06, 2013

New Nes Advantage record now available

Nes Advantage's second album was conjured out of virtually nothing, since it was believed that the debut LP 'The Sounds Of Heart Failure' and its accompanying EP 'Communist Pleasures' had hoovered up all the recordings made by the duo.

However, the band had in fact conducted several sessions since the 2003 - 4 period that yielded most of their work.  In 2005, they played an ambient, unrehearsed 30 minute set for an Ex Libris New Year's Eve party held at Colerabbey Studios, a night also notable for the introduction of Aaron McMullan to the record label's attention.  In 2006, they met to record via computer for the first time, during an overdub session for the 'Yonder? Calliope!' record.  At some point there was also a session that saw Ryan and Andrew eschew their traditional tools of guitar and piano, in favour of drums and bass respectively.  In 2013, a thorough trawl through old hard disks stored at Colerabbey elicited forgotten archive material tracked in 2003, that had only seen the light of day via CD-Rs shared with close friends of the group.

From these varied sources, a second record was fashioned, using some judicious editing of the master tapes.  The results are somewhat more skeletal compared to the 'Heart Failure' material, along with the introduction of newer instruments that occupied the Colerabbey facility at the time, such as a banjo finger piano, glockenspiel and a brief cameo on brass from My Attorney's Andy Warmington.  The listener can also hear clues to the more processed sounds that would feature in Ryan's later solo work, and Andrew's future production methods.  

Despite all this, 'Glow' still sees the band's core ethic of playing largely improvised material, recorded in one take, with a bent towards the strange and the haunted, remaining in full effect.