It’s a fractious world, and given that a Cocteau Twins reunion is only marginally less likely than a Nirvana one, we can agree at least that new material from former twin Robin Guthrie is inherently a good thing.
It’s been three years since the release of Mockingbird Love but Atlas is once more a quartet of instrumentals, each that run to more or less the three minute mark. The overall themes are personal – that of a traveler re-engaging with a post-pandemic world – but also more philosophically of places and cultures with a rapidly diminishing past.
Each track showcases a different aspect of Guthrie’s approach whilst forming part of a whole. La Perigrina is warm and wistful, whilst the title track is more austere, mirroring the work of his long time collaborator Harold Budd. On radio frequencies no longer transmitting but still heard, Metropol’s piano echoes into near space, whilst Without A Word most closely skirts the reverb laden architecture of his former venture. On Atlas being much needed is a hyper rare case of everyone agreeing to agree.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 