Broughton's Rules

Bounty Hunter 1853

Written by: PP on 12/10/2010 17:15:31

The focus with instrumental rock bands is often on creating beautiful, layered soundscapes that explore the furthest corners of sound through endless repetition and experimentalism, but this is not the case here. Instead, Broughton's Rules is an experiment in crafting spacey and dreamy music, intermixing it with heavy progression, psychedelia and thought-provocative passages. You might ask how instrumental-only music can be thought-provoking, but that is the key feature about this band and their debut release "Bounty Hunter 1853". I have no idea how they do it, but their music challenges the listener to stop and think about the world around them. But a cautionary notice here: you really have to submerge yourself completely to the music, submit to its power and let it take you on a journey through extremely varied soundscapes that all offer something a little different.

Of course, you should expect nothing less from an outfit that features ex-members of instrumental rock masters Don Caballero and Blunderbuss. They are rather far from their ordinary day jobs here, however, composing thoughtful, intelligent instrumental rock that's equal parts post-rock and progressive psychedelia. In a way, it's like taking the former band's mastery of the instrumental rock genre, and merging it with spacey, spread out atmospheres and soundscapes to creating something very different to what you're used to hearing from bands like this. In places, you'll hear 70s influenced prog rock, and elsewhere you'll suddenly meet embedded eletronica elements in the vein of Portugal. The Man seamlessly integrated into the mix. Check out "Childhood Sun", for instance. Vocals make a very, very seldom appearance on some tracks, and when they do, the haunted, soft croons add a nice extra touch to the music. See "Broadside" as an example.

But what's perhaps the best aspect about "Bounty Hunter 1853" is how varied the album is overall. You have tracks that are just a couple of minutes in length sitting in direct parallel to a ten minute mammoth "Night Smoker", or a couple of seven minute monsters, too. This brings the total play time to over 65 minutes, which might sound like too long of a record, but the band controls and guides their open-ended atmospheres so well that this never seems to become an issue, even after lengthy repeat-listening sessions to the record. Comes highly recommended to any instrumental rock fans who have the time and patience to totally immerse themselves into intensely intelligent music.

Download: Broadside, Night Smoker
For the fans of: Don Caballero, The High Confessions, From Monument To Masses
Listen: Myspace

Release date 23.11.2010
Relapse

Related Items | How we score?
Comments
comments powered by Disqus

Legal

© Copyright MMXXIV Rockfreaks.net.