Another Sand Snowman album, the third in as many months,
becomes available via the splendid Reverb Worship label. We are truly spoiled; Sand’s
musical riches are (as previously) housed in lovely artwork by the man himself
depicting a dream like sequence of floating women around a mandala. The beauty
of the sleeve is disquieting; the Chagall-esque figures ever so slightly creepy
and cloaked partially in shadows. The music inside is not dissimilar.
Indeed, openers ‘We Are Water’ (a glistening acoustic waterfall
of a song) and pensive piano piece ‘Invocation’ provide enough twisted turns to
disorientate and unnerve, leading the listener like an unwary Alice into a
sinister and hallucinatory wonderland. The organ led ‘Spiralscape’ strays into gothic
territory, its doom laden keys merging into the ghostly choirs and echoed guitar
lines of ‘Otherness’. This is a disconcerting
yet curiously beautiful journey through the looking glass, Sand’s dream world shimmering
and swaying in tone from acoustic prettiness to electronic howls of dark
matter.
Less overtly psychedelic than previous release ‘Sleeper’s
Hide And Seek’ and more edgy than the earlier ‘Autonal’, ‘Otherness’ works as a
mood piece, each element and track flowing into the next to create a lysergic
and surrealistic whole. There is a nightmarish quality to proceedings; ‘Hope’s Persistence’
with its off key xylophone and stalking guitar lines could well soundtrack one
of Jan Svankmajer’s more demented and unnerving animated films and closer ‘Endgaming’
is not unlike Saucerful-era Floyd’s darker forays into deep space.
A mostly instrumental album, though with the wordless accompaniment
of oft-collaborators Amandine Ferrari and Moonswift, this is best experienced in
one sitting preferably in the dark and staring at the night sky. Sand’s music
does not conform to your usual singer-songwriter middle of the road mundanity;
instead he provides the ‘Otherness’, the unique and bewitching sound of a true
artist.
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