The last time I felt this way about a debut EP was when Ride dovetailed harmonic white noise into my fifteen year old head like some new configuration of sounds for my life. Then it was the introspective wall of shoegaze, now it is something resembling ghost psychedelics, an intricate tapestry of familiar instruments heard through the tunnel of an aural kaleidoscope. With “Songs About You”, The Space Between Things finally begin their ascent into the wider public consciousness, while giant storm clouds of praise no doubt jostle for position in the wings. This is what musical free-climbing sounds like, scaling the dark face of the universe, a one-man team of musicians with songs as profound as the sounds he produces. Ideas balance on the ledge of melodies, precariously beautiful and intricately menacing.

There is no pomp or calculated swagger about Chris Hobson or the music he makes, everything is about simply being as the four tracks feel their way forward collectively, yet each one is immense and sure-footed in its own right, cascading, ambiguous, explosive, and understated. “Liquid Thought” pulses and murmurs. “Love’s On The Run” is TSBT at its majestic best, travelling over bass and guitar lines while the earth pauses immobile in sudden snapshots outside your window. “Moving For Protection” is arguably the highlight, fusing electric and acoustic forms with haunted jaw-dropping melodies. Closer “NYC Lights For Her” oscillates and peels away like layers of a dream… in the vicinity of My Bloody Valentine, only these songs are ultimately like nothing I’ve heard before. Comparisons are useless and trivial – all you can do is stand back and listen as it leaps across the precipise of possibilities, digging the details and seemingly infinite strokes and touches in search of some impossible sonic perfection.

But for a first offering this comes frighteningly close to some shimmering ideal. After all, self-recorded records are supposed to be clumsy, are they not? Minus the overt blemishes of fluffed notes and human hiss, “Songs About You” sounds somehow other-wordly and sophisticated, testament if anything to the rigours of mixing and mastering it has been subjected to. And I’m led to believe that this is but the tip of the iceberg (or foot of the mountain depending which way you want to look at it) of a vast body of unreleased work, making it all somehow even more exciting. All that’s left to say is I hope that you love it whoever the “You” of the title is, hit from Toronto in a spectral daydream vanishing into the gathering clouds stacking up beyond your shining upturned eyes.

You can download “Songs About You” for FREE (Yes, FREE!) at:

www.thespacebetweenthings.com

or check out their MySpace page at:

www.myspace.com/thespacebetweenthings

*for a further fix of TSBT why not download Daydream Generation 5 and Daydream Generation 6, featuring “Bare Hands” and “Postcard Crimes” respectively…

CATEGORIES:RELEASES, REVIEWS