July Skies Review

Dear all;

Here is a little album review for you from an album which has been lingering in my CD player for the past month or two...


ARTIST: July Skies

ALBUM: The English Cold

LABEL: Make Music (label address: www.makemusic.co.uk)


There are often a variety of ways you can always review albums. Some journalists will listen to an album quickly and write the first thing that often comes into their head, which in some ways often reflects their first impressions and little else. Other times, you need to constantly listen to the album and let the album reveal itself to you in its own pace and time before you can begin to get a feel of what message the album is trying to say.

Anthony Harding who is “July Skies”‘s second album “The English Cold” is an album which reveals itself to you in such a way. Where his first album from 2002, “Dreaming of Spirals” was a hazy summer album with sounds, which made me think of a variety of child hood memories from the 1970’s. “The English Cold” in contrast goes further back with a dedication on the front of the album “for lost airmen 1939 - 1945” and stories contained within just on the sleeves for example:

“We got used to ploughing by moonlight, and when there was no moon we worked to a special system of lanterns hung in the edge. It was a strange business; it had their eerie beauty, which so much nocturnal wartime activity possessed. Like searchlights, firepaths, the floating stars of night flying aircraft, our lighted tractors were but part of a new pattern.”

The music that is contained with the album is beautiful and haunting, sometimes within the same breathe, choosing to reveal itself slowly through memories than traditional music of the time.

Songs like the first track “Farmers and Villagers living within the shadow of Aerodromes” or the title track “The English Cold” carry an almost Durruti Column sound in places. However, where the Durruti Column are almost classical music, July Skies is more about mood and memory.

This is shown in particular on tracks like “August Country Fires”, where Anthony’s occasional use of vocals bring to mind perhaps “Slowdive” (from which a dedication to Neil Hadstead, their former vocalist is listed on their debut album), in the way the reverb is used to fade out the guitars and in places also the vocals itself, where it’s message has to be listened to over and over again before finally being revealed.
Several tracks also feature members of Epic 45 (with whom Anthony has guest starred on their current album “Against the pull of Autumn), in particular tracks like “Waiting to land”. “Waiting to Land” is a particular interesting track which starts off with programmed drums and a looping keyboard which is then slowly swallowed by reverb laced Guitars and Basses which is the sounds that may appear in your head when you are landing in a airplane rather than the music itself, which in a way perhaps sums up “The English Cold”.

And perhaps makes ideal sense on a cold November Night looking out of my window.