Anduin is the solo project of Jonathan Lee, he of late great longtime Aquarius Records faves Souvenir’s Young America, whose distinctive harmonica flecked metallic post rock we we dug big time. But in Anduin, Lee focused more on the minutiae of sound, crafting lush, haunting soundscapes, that buzz and drift, smolder and shimmer. the sounds more along the lines of groups like Jasper TX or Machinefabriek, and with a distinctive cinematic flair, the sounds at once epic and majestic, while at the same time subtle and introspective.
Apparently this new record, Stolen Years, is the result of a burglary at Lee’s house, which resulted in the loss of years and years worth of recordings (hence the title), and perhaps also the darkly spectral sound, infused with a deep melancholia, a spare, ghostly sonic landscape that manages to fuse field recordings, deep dronemusic, lumbering slowcore, downtempo electronica, and plenty of horns, into something soundtracky and sinister, brooding and ominous.
The record seems to spend most of its time rumbling and whirring through a sea of softly churning low end and dense layered whirs, but Lee has a delicate touch, whether it’s introducing the aforementioned jazzy horns, or echo drenched flute flutter, the sounds of children playing, or a skeletal programed skitter, it transforms this dronemusic into something much more sprawling and engrossing, almost a sort of chamber music, a dark classical drone that slips easily from weirdly spaced out sci-fi shimmer, to bleak, bottomless pit mesmer, from almost new age drift to slowjazz creep, the songs all woven together into one epic songsuite, one that most definitely speaks to loss, and not just the loss of the stolen sounds, but a loss that’s deeper and more personal. Powerful and haunting. Gorgeous stuff for sure.
Super swank packaging too, both the lp and the cd come housed in hand drawn, hand screened sleeves, with more hand drawn, handscreened prints inside!
Anduin: “Stolen Years” on CD and LP