KING CREOSOTE

Packed full of heartfelt musical odes to life and love, 'I des.

..' racks out his acoustic sounds with a plethora of modular 'scapes, and a broad variety of drone-making apparatus to make this glittering, sweeping epic. While the record’s kaleidoscopic musical terrain plots vibraphones, accordions, e-bows, samplers, ungulates, scratched records and wine glass-drones across its landscape, there’s common ground in the wonder of the synthesiser – not to mention Anderson’s singular voice, and his roguish, roving, ever-evolving, gorgeous songs in the key of Fife. It’s tempting to assign KC’s rekindled love for ambient and modular kicks to sublime co-conspirator Jon Hopkins (2007’s Bombshell; 2011’s Mercury Prize-shortlisted Diamond Mine), but – more directly – it’s down to seeing Nils Frahm live in Edinburgh; to an enduring fascination with loops (“because we’re always going back”); and to a book by David Stubbs. “I started listening to drones and stuff again because I read Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany,” he offers. The album was largely written between 2016 and 2020, but nothing is ever as simple as that: there’s something old (trees), something blue (also trees), something borrowed (home tapes and vocals from through the ages; lyrics from the distant past), and something new (KC quips that a potential title for this album was We All Got Synths for Christmas).