SIXTY METONYMIES

Tartar Lamb serves initially as an outlet for Toby Driver to release his guitar/violin duet (augmented with trumpet and percussion from a duo of Friendly Bears). Sixty Metonymies shares with his first solo album in it's leaning towards spacious avant-garde concert music. Dissimilarities arise when one examines the album further as this has a totally different goal, sound, and feel to it.

The composition develops focusing around two things: anticipation and tension. The slowly developing piece, replete with longly sustained notes courtesy of Mia's violin and Toby's swirling guitar, continually causes the listener to dwell on the expected development of the work which rarely bends towards your predictions. As a result palatable tension is created as the piece seems to bend and bend without ever breaking. I believe the success of this album comes from the players' abilities to create and sustain this tension. The initial three tracks accomplish this goal fully. However, in the fourth the desired (I assume) result never comes into fruition. Consequentially, the concluding track fails to maintain my interest, and this amounts to essentially the only flaw in the album.

In particular I love the effect Toby generates with his guitar. Notes appear out of thin air to strike the listener, then wobbly fade and fade, yet never totally seem to disappear from your ears. From this Sixty Metonymies has a nearly ever present backdrop. This album produces visions of many tiny ripples appearing in a calm body of water. The water never perturbs too violently, but it remains in a state of movement unnatural to itself. This visual serves as my best description of what you will hear here.

If not for the break in atmosphere towards the end, this may have been a perfect piece of music. As it stands though I still really enjoy returning to this album. As with his solo album, I think this will appear to fans of avant-garde concert music more than motW/KD fans.

[As a side note: Most music I listen to seems to occur either in the plane or in 3-d space within my head as I hear it. The entirity of this album occurs on the line inside my head though. Usually this would only happen with a single melody being played on an instrument. Not particularly important, but something very strange to me.]