In autumn earlier this year we set off to an old barn in the middle of the Lake District with acoustic instruments and some recording equipment. During the couple of days we spent there we wrote and recorded some songs. “Helm” is the result of that, it will be released on Little Red Rabbit Records on the 7th of June and features artwork by Gemma Lacey beautifully printed on a chipboard record sleeve.

You can pre-order it from us here.

There will be more info about Helm in the new blog section in the next couple of days, along with track excerpts.

In other news, welcome to the world Noah Watkins, born 21/03/10!

Article written by James S – Apr 21, 2005

The Fuzzy Lights are Xavier and Rachel from Cambridge and beyond that I can provide no biographical detail. They are of an unknown age, except that they clearly remember that week around five years ago that Godspeed You Black Emperor were declared the future of music by the NME. “In Silence We Weep” sounds a lot like GYBE and their ilk, only with around 16 members fewer members. Consequently, it’s about as groundbreaking as a paraplegic mole.

What it is, though, is bloody gorgeous. The mournful sweep of Rachel’s violin and the rolling rumble and riffs of Xavier’s multi-layered guitar tracks combine to make the epic No Signal – Help! very special indeed. The fact that it becomes an entirely different song half way through, before building to an incessant and punishing climax, does nothing to detract from it.

The other track, Picture Thoughts, which also tops the eight minute mark, sounds like Depeche Mode’s Pimpf being played by two particularly melancholic undertakers, which probably shouldn’t work as well as it does. The Fuzzy Lights are a great reminder that, when it’s done this well, post-rock still has the power to move you.

It’s true what they they – nice things really do come in small packages. This limited edition ep comes on one of those cute mini-cds and features original photo artwork hand assembled.
The music is a collage of strings and minimalist percussion, expertly woven into a rich and constantly evolving soundscape. Reminiscent of Detwiije and Deerpark, both reviewed elsewhere in tasty this month, the two tracks make for slightly uncomfortable listening at times, but that extra challenge only makes the experience more valuable.

Shane Blanchard

Formed in Cambridge back in 2004, three-piece Fuzzy Lights have since made quite a few ears prick up with their softly sweeping, ambient live sets. This EP neatly pulls off much the same trick, serving up a three-track helping of the aforementioned soundscape in the comfort of your own home – or, indeed, anyone else’s. The smaller scale doesn’t stop the songs having much the same effect as they do live, creating the same feeling of time having been put on hold for the music’s duration and the same desire to just lean back into the sound and let it envelope you for the next howeverlong.

A large part of that feeling of time suspension comes from the drones that Fuzzy Lights use to create an all-but-imperceptibly shimmering base for their sound. Over this they pick out darts of emotion using violin and the odd strum of guitar, creating enough of a focus to their sound to stop the listener getting bored with the drones droning on. This tremulous, violin-washed noise contains enough emotion to easily prevent it being relegated to background noise, but expresses it in such a gentle, abstract way that the EP never stops being a soothing, welcoming listen. Those who like a bit of emotional substance and subtle complexity to their spellbinding ambient noise are advised to navigate by Fuzzy Lights.

7 / 10

A lovely bit of chamber ambience (that’s in the classical sense) from Mi & L’au’s backing group and band in their own right – Fuzzy Lights. This short EP is full of bowed guitar and violin swells. Sort of reminds me of Godspeed or Esmerine with all that slow and majestic unfurling, but is probably more reminiscent of the Amateur soundtrack, with track three’s choral aspects capturing the comparison superbly. There’s lots of emotional attachment to be found here with an oddly optimistic slant that makes you hungry for more. The sound of falling stars and flickering candle light – simply lovely…

“The East of England’s answer to Dirty 3.”

Some music is just perfect for deliciously gloomy days when you want the atmosphere to be reflectively beautiful. Fuzzy Lights win that on a number of fronts – moody rock with violin that’s part hushed classicism and part crumbling intensity. Sometimes words aren’t needed.

A slow burning album taking in Americana, folk, county and psych noise, Fuzzy Lights’ debut is a record to lose yourself in. Semi-improvised and recorded in members’ houses, the nine tracks veer from widescreen violin-led majesty to garage rock noise outs and ambient waves of sonic sandpaper. Instrumental for the most part, lone snatches of voices can be heard in passing; the effect is a huge, cinematic record of varied beauty that quickly endears itself to the curious. Like all great instrumental post-rock, the effect is an organic ebbing and flowing that give the speakers a damn good work out. 7/10

Get 3 songs: Capturing Shadows, Reflective Surfaces, Something To Do With Light
Dig it? Dig deeper: Mogwai, Dirty 3, Molasses

Highly cinematic blend of post-Americana / psychedelia. A very promising debut.

First of three releases from the cutely formed Little Red Rabbit imprint which should by rights be stretching, yawning and emerging from their hidey holes and onto these pages during the next few days – the other two incidentally being outings from Anna Kashfi entitled ‘Procurement‘ (wait till you hear their version of the Bad Seeds ‘the mercy seat’ – entrance fee deserving on its own) and Crazy Man Michael’s equally rarefied majesty groove locked within the awe struck ‘the green light’.

Anyhow David Little Red Rabbit sent these trio of little nuggets along from his Manchester based HQ with the Cambridge based quintet Fuzzy Lights debut full length immediately garnering our attention mainly for the fact at the way they interweave such turbulence and tenderness from such an inconceivable minimalist sound canvas, a canvas that in turns had us swiftly drawing mental comparisons to Her Name is Calla and Virgin Passages in terms of their ability to equally carve out a sense of measured stateliness and artery pumping tension in the lull of the quiet spaces to match those found in the moments of the soaring crests of crescendo peaks – non more is this best exemplified than on the ravaged snake charmed ‘capturing shadows‘ (in many ways the second part of a triptych sound-scaping the onset and eventual passing of a storm – this being ‘the storm‘) as it fractures, fragments and builds with unrelenting mass into a squalling torrential storm of free noise fury.

Opening to the sound of a crunching thunderclap, the reverential ’blackout II’ (the storm approaching) softly snakes into the eerily beautified territories more commonly recognised on Black Heart Processions first three full lengths, the ghostly aching pine of the Theremin forlornly weeping is sumptuously caressed and comforted by a creaking noir like shanty cradling instilled by the entwining tear stained pairing of the violin and harmonium as they eke out their enchanted ethereal lilt for your lump forming in the throat delight.

Swept with panoramic effect ‘a distant voice’ truly is an intense colossus of epic proportions, a dizzyingly brooding though beautifully demurring psych folk gem seemingly reared and cultured in the spirit of the Appalachians, pierced with the mysterious hollow of the deep south delta and lushly graced with the tranquil green patchwork folds of an English pastoral elegance.

The sounds timeless and nature bound are bleached with mood changing flurries that veer between the wild and untamed to the genteel almost snoozing (as on the softly lingering cascades of the faintly drawn rustic psyche folly of the Set Fire to Flames like ’safe place’). Equally at home bathing your listening experience with softly tendered psyche shimmering celestial tides as on ’eastern winds’ (the storm fading) with its mind mellowing hypnotic arabesque glazes or applying a monumental artistry to an already richly veined tapestry best viewed on perhaps the sets centrepiece the dust swirled embers of ’colour of the sun’ which unless our ears do deceive will come as something of a prayers answered event for those of you who ever paused and thought what GSYBE would sound like if ever they shimmied up to Neil Young. Its left to the departing ’(when we reached the) mountain top’ with its sweetly frail heart string tugging and lamenting spectral post rock echoes to fondly see you out when a rush of light headed glowing euphoria fills you to have you strangely feeling that you’ve experienced and passed through a deeply introspective examination unscathed and emotionally more resilient than you were before you arrived.

www.littleredrabbit.co.uk

Key tracks -

Colour of the sun
Eastern winds
Capturing shadows

MARK BARTON