Remember Remember

This Scottish ensemble continue on in their all-instrumental way with third album, Forgetting The Present; their best. A mix of Album Leaf-esque near-whimsy and gorgeous, textural kaleidoscopes – always with just a hint of folk-ish intent, so even with the groove swirls and builds in support of early standout, La Mayo, there’s something ever so slightly Penguin Café Orchestra-esque about this. Maybe it’s in the fact that this ensemble has been built up around the efforts of key Remember-member, former one-man-band-member, Graeme Ronald. Maybe it’s in the soundtrack-like feels to so many of the finished pieces. At any rate the music of Remember Remember – and particularly the music on Forgetting The Present is, at times, bursting with ideas, but never seems too rich, never feels like it will bubble over, the right flavours are being introduced, the correct amount of simmering.

The Old Ways is reminiscent of Mike Oldfield’s work from the early 1970s, those moody bits on side two of Tubular Bells, passages with Ommadawn, but it’s in the slightly longer tracks where Remember Remember really excels – Purple Phase, album opener Blabbermouth, the aforementioned La mayo, Why You Got A Blue Face? and the slowly unfolding, enchanting, spectral Frozen Frenzy. When pushing the groove out and allowing a slow-build, creating a hypnotic feel across 6-8 minutes there’s something in the music that starts in much the same way as Jimmy LaValle’s Album Leaf material but builds into a musical mosaic more comparable with Martin Dosh’s work. And finally, Frozen Frenzy returns us to that Oldfield-esque feel, a lilting, lovely lullaby, a perfect bookend against Blabbermouth’s more wide-eyed and space-reaching opener. A really wonderful record to get lost in. So easy to enjoy; a lush exploration of space, tone and mood.