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LP
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FTR 746LP
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E Gone is Daniel Westerlund from Stockholm, Sweden, and Adventures Before the Body is his long-awaited latest excursion into cosmically earthy musical alchemy, rounding out a trilogy of albums begun in 2013 with All the Suns of the Earth, and continuing with Advice to Hill Walkers in 2016 (both also released by Deep Water Acres and Sunrise Ocean Bender). Musically, Adventures builds on its predecessors' eclecticism and love of sonic juxtapositions -- astute psychedelic guitar lines swirled together with exotic instrumentation and modal motifs, rock riffs alongside ethnic percussion and old-school beats, drones and atmospheric effects blending into electronic deep dives. A pair of songs bring back Westerlund's vocals, though the overall compositional logic scales up from the shorter instrumental pieces on Advice into more progressive territory (most notably the 14-minute title track). As that suggests, Adventures also extends the triptych conceptually -- if All the Suns was about waking up and breaking free, and Advice was a metaphorical travel guide of diverse vignettes, Adventures is about expansion or explosion, whether outwards or inwards; evoking, in the man's own words, "a feeling of vertigo in the vastness of the universe." That said, deep philosophical musings are in no way necessary to appreciate the sheer enjoyment within Adventures' grooves. These are songs and sounds of mystery and wonder, as sonically experimental as they are melodically accessible, taking form somewhere outside of conventional genre lines. An album of shifting textures and formidable scope that rewards attentive ears and repeat listening. Adventures Before the Body is brought to you by Cardinal Fuzz/Feeding Tube Records, in collaboration with Deep Water Acres, and in tribute to Sunrise Ocean Bender Records and Kevin McFadin.
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