Albums

Album Review: Millimetre

[Album: Obsidian]
[Label: Orectic Records]

Millimetre is one man‘s vision, and that man is Terence J. McGaughey. Since the band’s inception in 1998, McGaughey has received a steady flow of critical acclaim for his densely-patterned sweeping walls of lo-fidelity. Yet it took a move from Belfast to London before McGaughey released his debut album in 2005, ’Love Won Out’, on his own label, Orectic Records.

The follow-up, ‘Obsidian’, takes his songwriting in a more personal and intimate direction. It takes it’s inspiration from an imaginary fortune-telling session and recants tales of drowning, turning thirty,
family trees and love. Oppressive all-encompassing samples and hushed vocals coil themselves gently around you and constrict and crush inwards. The title-track is an epic 12-minutes of slowly-shifting sands built up around an ethereal, repeating arpeggio stream of backfill. It’s akin to standing just offshore while the soundwaves continually try and wash you back inland. ‘I Fell Into A Mirror’ places you amongst the resonating bells of, what turns out to be, Southwark Cathedral, then tries to calm your rattling nerves with a hushed series of vocals. It shows how courageous he can be in his selection of samples and certainly isn’t, in any way, the most accessible track on offer.

Millimetre push boundaries, test waters and inevitably plumb depths as well as reach for the skies. With samples that come from sources as diverse as a gas tank, birdsong, domestic movements around a flat, the ambient sounds from vast empty spaces, and fragments of conversation, half the fun could be in spotting them within. All the while you‘ll be inside McGaughey‘s head as he grapples with your senses on ‘With The Flow’ or drags you kicking and screaming back to the steady beat of ‘Black Dog Avenue’. It’s all undeniably clever, indisputably brave and it will inevitably both infuriate and delight in equal measure.

For fans of: Cocteau Twins, Bark Psychosis, Khonnor
Band links = Millmetre

Search for this CD!

Bookmark to:

Previous & Next