A Dancing Beggar — Homemade Recordings
Mining the post rock / drone furrow to perfection, A Dancing Beggar manage to fulfil every promise they made and lay a gauntlet down for future releases. And yet nothing was forthcoming. However, This collection is a perfect reminder of the beautiful music this group made.
Beginning with the utterly sublime “Ghosts” this 7 minute wondrous piece is a mix of playful guitar intricacies and over bearing drones that marry together to give you a heartache you won’t have felt since your teens. I’m utterly lost in this album already.
“Returning” picks up the pace with a simple beat and piano refrain over a mid-heavy distorted drone. Occasionally this tracks tempo drifts oddly. However, that doesn’t detract from the splendour of the track.
Moving further into the album with “Stars Bring Us Closer” has the repetitive guitar refrain normally found mixed in to a My Bloody Valentine EP with tiny droplets of sound slowly emerging in the mix. Before the drum machine kicks in with such a gorgeously balanced rhythm it’s perfect. There is something so very simple in this music, and yet you know from hearing it that this has been painstakingly put together. And it’s beautiful and timeless.
As the albums moves onwards the music shifts slightly. Gone are the drones and the vague sense of claustrophobia, but the actual music is just as spartan and just as wonderful. “How They Grow” is almost a country track spliced with a classical track just as the song ends.
Instrumental music is never seen as sellable in a pop format, mainly because it uses that format in an alternate way to how everyone expects. Dif Juz, for example, never really took off to the level they deserved, and yet their music, without a voice, was almost more plaintiff and had an even keener sting in it’s aim into your heart. A Dancing Beggar have that same ability and an even truer aim.
If you are a fan of Dif Juz, MBV, Seefeel or Cocteau Twins then youwill be utterly lost in this album. This might be a collection of tracks from around 10 years ago, but there is nothing in this album that doesn’t sound fresh and wonderful. There is an innocence in each track and this is possibly what helps this music feel so perfect. It’s almost as if the band themselves aren’t aware of just how good they are. I could listen to this all day. I’m lost.