Someday, someone will describe with great precision how the music of ALL IN THE GOLDEN AFTERNOON so perfectly and strangely casts in sound those emotions related to love, longing, wonder and wandering. Today is not that day, and this is not written by that someone.
We wish that weren’t the case. We wish it were easy. We wish detailing how space can be stretched so sublimely by synth-stabbing spouses from Austin, Texas, were effortless. It’s not.
Nor is the music of All in the Golden Afternoon, though it certainly feels effortless. Not in the sense of being easy, or void of deep consideration, or that the sounds are unexamined. Not at all. Rather, that effortless sensation – perhaps best illustrated on the band’s recent album, “Magic Lighthouse on the Infinite Sea” – stems from a collection of songs that sound natural in the broadest sense: songs that were not assembled, but born, songs free from artificiality, affectation or inhibitions.
And where there is the danger that ascribing notions of the “natural” in music can result in an exclusion of the “supernatural” … it’s not a concern when discussing All in the Golden Afternoon. Maybe you missed that part about their latest album being called “Magic Lighthouse on the Infinite Sea.” Maybe you long to drift effortlessly, naturally on an infinite sea. Maybe …
Listen: I wasn’t kidding around when I started this by saying I cannot describe what it is about the music of All in the Golden Afternoon that is so magical to me, what it is that has compelled me to keep an All in the Golden Afternoon pin on the lapel of my black jacket for nearly a year now (since seeing them at Austin Psych Fest 3), and whether this will translate in any way to you and your personal musical enjoyment. But I’m also not kidding when I say: you should give them a listen.
Download “Symphonies of Spirits” by All in the Golden Afternoon.
You can preview and buy the music of All in the Golden Afternoon at their Bandcamp page.
And after you do that, you may find yourself driven to have your eyes rolling into the back of your head, approaching a mental state of utter anticipatory, wordless, electro-psych glee at the prospect of their collaboration with that brilliant, kooky, kosmiche kraut, Ulrich Schnauss.
And you may be further driven to contribute to their Kickstarter project to fund the fully realized album to be born of this collaboration.
And even if you can only spare one dollar, you will be part of this project and you will know that your engagement will be met with nothing short of gratitude. And you’ll get a snazzy pin that you can keep on the lapel of your black jacket for a year, too.
“And yet we still find ourselves confronted by those stars rushing towards us through the darkness. The sound of radio static connects inner and outer space. Tuning through a wireless dial also means discovering that unique audible space that exists between stations: a mysterious zone of harmonies and distortions that function according to some strange and distinct logic of their own. As Emmanuel Kant observed is his Critique of Practical Reason: ‘Two things fill the mind with ever increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily they are reflected upon – the starry heaven above and the moral law within me.'”
– “Background Radation: The West German Republic Tunes In to the Cosmos” by Ken Hollings (an essay from the book, “Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and Its Legacy“
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