{"id":9801,"date":"2015-12-17T05:30:24","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T05:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=9801"},"modified":"2015-12-04T19:30:28","modified_gmt":"2015-12-04T19:30:28","slug":"album-review-ancient-river-keeper-of-the-dawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/12\/17\/album-review-ancient-river-keeper-of-the-dawn\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Ancient River &#8212; Keeper of the Dawn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-9803\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/ancient_river.jpg\" alt=\"ancient_river\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/ancient_river.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/ancient_river-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/ancient_river-65x65.jpg 65w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>With its transgressive album cover \u2013 photos arranged in an upside-down crucifix style, featuring spooky overlays of grinning skulls \u2013 you&#8217;d be forgive for guessing that <b>Ancient River<\/b>&#8216;s <i>Keeper of the Dawn<\/i> is some kind of black metal album. But it&#8217;s not. What we have here is dream, gauzy, minor-key rock of a decidedly late 60s psychedelic style. The ten songs all feature hypnotic melodies atop simple chord patterns, whispered vocals, and gentle organs, along with subtle picking at heavily reverberating electric guitars. It&#8217;s all very evocative stuff.<\/p>\n<p>The songs don&#8217;t really unfold or develop in a meaningful way, but that&#8217;s not the point. There&#8217;s plenty of drama in the instrumentation and arrangement as it is, most notably on the title track. Some of the pieces \u2013 take \u201cNew Rising\u201d \u2013 are mere sketches of songs. Others have more character, such as the dark, <b>Byrds<\/b>-in-a-spaghetti-western \u201cMother of Light,\u201d quite possibly the most fully realized track on Keeper of the Dawn.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-9802\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/ancient_river2.jpg\" alt=\"ancient_river2\" width=\"300\" height=\"327\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/ancient_river2.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/ancient_river2-275x300.jpg 275w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Vocals are used as a textural element on the excellent \u201cStay With Me,\u201d another track with a fetching melodic line and some very <b>Nick Mason<\/b>-y drum fills. Some tracks \u2013 \u201cNew Rising,\u201d \u201cThe Next One,\u201d and \u201cHallways and Mirrors\u201d serve mainly as atmospheric link tracks, but arguably they&#8217;re the glue that holds the album together as a whole.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"float: left; padding: 10px; width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ss&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=musoscribe-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=B00V6X7DPK&#038;asins=B00V6X7DPK&#038;linkId=MOSEYPGEFNGQNMEL&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The disc closes with <i>Keeper of the Dawn<\/i>&#8216;s longest track, \u201cEnd of the Dawn.\u201d The track develops slowly, and is a tidy distillation of all of Ancient River&#8217;s virtues into a singe track. The fake ending (a la <b>The Beatles<\/b>&#8216; \u201cStrawberry Fields Forever\u201d) is a nice touch. The limited edition vinyl release features stunning two-tone splatter pattern.<\/p>\n<p>Ancient River&#8217;s two primary members <b>James Barreto<\/b> and <b>Alexis Cordova Jr.<\/b> live in London and Austin, Texas, respectively. There&#8217;s buzz about the group in the Austin psych scene, and influential UK magazine <i>New Musical Express<\/i> featured Ancient River in their \u201cUnder the Radar\u201d section earlier this year. <i>Keeper of the Dawn<\/i> is the group&#8217;s sixth full-length release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With its transgressive album cover \u2013 photos arranged in an upside-down crucifix style, featuring spooky overlays of grinning skulls \u2013 you&#8217;d be forgive for guessing that Ancient River&#8216;s Keeper of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9802,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,57,62,65,73],"tags":[2581],"class_list":["post-9801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-psych","category-rawk","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-ancient-river","cat-49-id","cat-57-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9801"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9963,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9801\/revisions\/9963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}