Cloudland Canyon: Lie In Light

Label: Kranky

7 minutes into Cloudland Canyon’s remarkable new record Lie In Light you might be pretty sure you’re listening to the first Neu record. The album’s opener “Krautwerk” is a pretty faithful tribute to it’s punny namesakes, which is great, but might make for an album more novel than satisfying if the rest of the songs followed suit. Thankfully the homage paid on the first song to Faust, Can, Neu, Cluster and the like just expands into different shades and places as the music continues. Pulse-driven Krautrock rhythms bounce along one minute, fading into shoe-gazy washes of guitar textures on the next song. The stellar, otherworldly “Mothlight Part 1” sheds most discernable reference points with obscured vocals, muted waves of sound and a type of lulling soft psychedellia that when combined with the spikes of rhythm and noise, makes this record so great start to finish. (Fred)