THE i-mockery YSI thread!

[iron mitchell]

Fires Were Shot - Solace

h!!p://s63.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1V14BA50WOWOI1OWMRD7JEKXU1

"Fires Were Shot are an experimental guitar duo hailing from Austin, Texas. At once contemplative, haunting and disheveled, the band's second release, Solace, continues to set for th the abyssal, effected acoustic guitar sounds found on their debut release, Form the Hearth, self-released on the band's own Its Only Me imprint in 1998. Solace is a collection of complex emotions, warm guitar tones, and sculpted noise. Each genre-defying song contains image-evoking soundscapes, guitar melodies, and has the gritty quality of spontaneous performance. This is not drone, electronic, or ambient; it is very analog, very experimental, and extremely cinematic, evoking the arid geography of the band's southwest Texas home. Featuring the talents of guitarists John Wilkins and Clay Walton, Fires Were Shot have been compared to everyone from Windy and Carl to Roy Montgomery and most appropriately, Austin neighbors Stars of the Lid." -forcedexposure.com

"Drone. Strictly speaking, it's a musical figure, a vaguely defined chunk of vocabulary that musicians use to fill up their minutes. Then again, so is a riff, but the two are usually in different spheres -- one quasi-religious, the other material, sometimes separated by as much as an echo/delay pedal or an e-bow. Long, sustained tones make for a trance-like listening experience and dry riffage makes you pump your fists. If you're doubting any part of this equation, especially that first part, then FiRES WERE SHOT have a record for you.
Solace is much more than a collection of long, sustained tones, and usually a step sideways from indie acts who use the template to help listeners bliss out (like Windy and Carl) or to send them into an agitated trance (like Stars of the Lid, who share FiRES WERE SHOT's hometown of Austin, Texas). For starters, almost all of the tracks here (with the notable exception of the nineteen-minute, loop-based wanderer "Ocean M31") come in under three minutes, which gives FiRES WERE SHOT exactly enough time to spin their delicate web of guitar figures, constantly, carefully shifting overtones and other unearthly sounds before the mellowness of it all sends you off to an astral plane (in other words, to sleep). Each track is like a brief look at the sky -- filled with all sorts of different textures, constantly mutating, beautiful without pushing any agendas, sporting a surprise shape or color every once in a while. "Aside Herself" starts the record off with a modest pre-dawn meditation, and "Quickbeam" thickens things up with a scraped guitar string and the buzzing sound of a dozen violins milking that sweet spot between pitches and overtones of pitches, played by eternal musicians Tony Conrad and La Monte Young. FiRES WERE SHOT are careful not to hypnotize themselves out of existence, though -- "Eierie" breaks the reverie with some muted post-industrial tape noise -- then more chiming guitars enter the mix. Tracks like "Sailene" and "Hollow" are just as specific about the sorts of textures they'll use, and just as precariously balanced between notes and noises, often stretching the former out into the latter with washes of carefully sculpted static and distortion.
If a lot of guitars playing the same chord under a wash of reverb isn't enough to get your juices flowing, then Solace's carefully designed world of sound, which straddles the traditionally pretty and the engagingly abstract, might be enough to perk up your ears. Fortunately, the length of its songs and the comparative formal punch each one packs will let you appreciate the beauty before you doze off." -Matt Pierce