Post-rock
Shy, Low release “Purity Spiral” on Friday 16 October through Pelagic Records. It is the first album from the Richmond, Virginia instrumental quintet since “Snake Behind the Sun”, which came out on 8 October 2021 on the same label: five years almost to the day.
There are seven tracks: “Grace”, “The Bloat”, “Palmistry”, “Burning Fields”, “The Charging, Brazen Bull”, “Purity Spiral” and “Greenwood”. Three can already be heard: “The Bloat”, at 5:46; “Palmistry”, at 7:16, released this week; and the title track, at 9:12.
The band are Dylan Partridge on drums, Gregg Peterson, Zak Bryant and Kai Zamora on guitars and Drew Storcks on bass. The label describes “Palmistry” as a quick pulse climbing over a serrated groove that keeps getting more intense until it bursts and falls away again.
Pelagic bills it as heavier than anything they have done before and places it alongside Caspian, Russian Circles, If These Trees Could Talk, Pelican and Toundra. It comes out on vinyl and on digisleeve CD, the latter at seventeen euros from the label’s shop.
Text by Marçal Bonastre