Sickoakes - Seawards

(2006)
Having had a flawless string of releases last year, Type Records is beginning their 2006 schedule with a bang, quite literally. A project several years in the making, Swedish sextet Sickoakes� Seawards is a startling, lovely documentation of the place where Mercury Rev, Explosions in the Sky, and Henryk Gorecki meet, with plenty of their own flourishes in place. Opening with the brief overture �Driftwood�, the album reaches its first stride on �Taking the Stairs Instead of the Elevator�, whose panoramic guitar vistas loom over precise, minimal drums as the approach of a simply chilling brass section turns the song down an entirely different path evoking a muted, though triumphant melancholy. �Oceans On Hold� slowly expands into a desert from a single grain of sand, with weathered drum patterns and spiraling whirlwinds of ascending melodies, while �Wedding Rings & Bullets In The Same Golden Shrine� swallows half the album over the course of its two parts, intently developing through Stravinsky-esque string themes and endless layers of guitar. This is truly music that seems larger than life and, at the risk of sounding trite, somewhere close to heaven-sent. At least we won�t have to worry about finding a proper score for the day the world ends, though � Sickoakes have done a stellar job with it already, and you�d do well to have yourself a listen."Tom Meluch, ATMSPHR"

Sickoakes are:
Mats - Guitar
Simon - Guitar
David - Bass
Jonas - Saxophone
Jacob - Saxophone
Joel - Trumpets and Trombones
Erik - Drums
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