The Gentleman Losers: Rural Route No. 5
Standard Form

Standard Form continues its three-inch series with an installment by The Gentleman Losers titled Rural Route No. 5. Having the Finnish duo of Samu and Ville Kuukka contribute to the series would seem to be a bit of a coup for the Toronto-based label, as The Gentleman Losers have made an international name for themselves with two full-length albums on City Centre Offices and its sister label Büro. Ushered in by the murmur of outdoors field recordings, “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air” unfolds with measured deliberation with tremolo shudders overlaid by the cry of slide guitar playing and atmospheric electronic detail. Funereal in tone and low-level in pitch, the music is calm-inducing, and its mood wistful, even resigned, suggestive of one surrendering to circumstance rather than vainly fighting it. “Valley Green” drapes the delicate pluck of acoustic guitars across a bed of glitchy whirrs and ambient hiss. More elegiac than resigned is the final piece, “At Dawn I Am the Morning Clouds, At Evening the Falling Rain,” which marries ambient electronic accents and electric guitar peals to a lovely chord progression captured in slow-motion. Apparently the music's creation was informed by the longing experienced by the Kuukkas as they relocated from home, and as such are deeply melancholy sonic portraits of times spent in snow-laden Helsinki, in the Swiss countryside, and in hot, late-summer Berlin. Like the others in the series, the release comes in a limited edition of 150 copies so act fast if you're interested.

November 2010