My Cat Is An Alien — What Space Is Made For
The three cd box set features mainly shorter tracks compared with the bands usually trade mark twenty to thirty minute pieces. In all there are thirteen tracks spread over the three discs, and on avenge they last between three to six minutes a piece. Sure here and there are a few longer tracks, but for the most part this set sees the pair cutting down on their often expansive & lengthy space bound sonic sculptures to shorter, neater and more precise audio statements. I’ll have to admit that when I first played though this box set I was somewhat disappointed, underwhelmed & more than a little let down…all of the tracks seem to end before they really got going & on the whole the box set felt too nice, twee & uninvolving, and alot of this was down to the track lengths. But after three or four plays through I decided not to focus in on individual tracks but look at the box set as one long piece split into smaller sonic chapters or acts, and then the set seemed to really click & make perfect drifting sense to me.
As well as the mainly shorter track length on display here the brothers have also really pulled back the noisy, denser and more muilt layered edges of their sound. A lot of the albums tracks find the pairs distinctive space whispers over just either basic & lo-fi drone matter, on top of ornate pickings of handmade harps, over prepare toy piano lonesomeness, or drifting yet stripped atmospheric guitar improv unfolds. Sure there are still elements of swirling home made electronics here and there, but for the most part the sets sound gets steadily more organic, ghostly & sparse as the three discs go on.
I won’t go into individual tracks details here as I really feel that will ruin much of the charm, surprise & haunting yet hurt edge of this beautiful set. But I will say this is certainly quite a departure from the pairs past work, yet it still retains that spacey & star bound edge that the project has always has, it’s just feels a bit more sad, stripped & morose here. I guess you could say that the bands past classic albums like 2005’s “Cosmic light of the third Millennium”, or 2007’s “ Il Suono Venuto Dall Spazio” built a more relatively straight forward & defined sonic pictures of vast shifting space ways & unknown/ mysterious planets; where as “What Space Is Made For” is a lot more sketchy, fragile and emotionally like looking at faded pictures of long gone astronauts, or investigate long grounded space crafts whose occupants have long departed yet they have left behind hazed & aged footage of their trips to unknown worlds.
So to sum-up this is another very worthy & creative take on space bound soundcaping from My Cat Is An Alien, just don’t expect it to grab you straight away…you'll have to let it slowly but surely sink in over five or six plays, and don’t focus in on the smaller parts i.e. the single tracks themselves, but see the three disc set as one long work of sonic art that’s split into shorter sonic chapters or acts.