A Stable Reference

Their second album, and the one that really brought this post-rock trio to wider attention – they ended up on Flying Nun in the UK, after all, no small sign of quality at the time. A Stable Reference doubles down on the claustrophobia implicit in parts of their debut, Prazision – it’s by some measure their darkest, deepest collection of songs. Hard to really sum up what they were doing here without recourse to odd analogies, like ‘Morricone guitars under thick plates of cold grey steel,’ or ‘Brian Eno’s Another Green World with a terrible migraine,’ but it works because its mood is so all-encompassing and compelling, and the songs are uniformly strong.