Belong - "Colorloss Record" EP

Belong - My Clown (St. Ives 2008)

Belong - "Colorloss Record" EP / St. Ives

Valentine's Day this year is an excellent opportunity to spill (no pun intended) my love for Belong. It seems like there have been a lot of people doing this lately thanks to that tour-only CD-R that hit the web a month or so ago, and now this. But I tell you, October Language is hands-down one of the best records of 2006. There are many contributing factors for its notoriety - not least of which being that Turk Dietrich and Michael Jones began recording the record in 2004 and finished just before Hurricane Katrina hit - but the beauty of its ambient shoegazing has rarely been matched. It is this technique of understatement - as well as placement - that makes them appealing as the minimal yin to, say, M83's extravagant yang.

They also play in another world of introversion, of minor disturbances in dreams deep in the night. Belong are, to put it another way, a nocturnal group. Fundamentally, they exist to soothe the hearts of wrecked landscapes and to try and make sense of that which we cannot always understand. This is what the unconscious is all about, and gossamer gushes of guitar haze seem to be most apt at putting the puzzle together.

So when I read initial reports that Colorloss Record, pressed in 250 copies of vinyl with handmade covers, was to feature vocals and consist entirely of covers, I was skeptical. This sounds like a significant shift for a group that is looked upon fondly for ambient, wordlessly original works. It's divided fans who were so devoted to October Language, but has also found new believers with an EP that points in a new direction for a full-length due out later this year (with another EP in between these two releases).

Luckily, this new direction is not so dramatically different from before. The swirling guitar brainwashes you as blurry as ever for these songs, which aren't easy to find the sources for. The press release prefers to point to these interpretations as seashells for the originals, which one can hear listening to Syd Barrett's "Late Night." British psychedelia must weigh heavily in the duo's iPod playlists, because the other three songs also originate from late-60s UK 45s: Tintern Abbey's "Beeside," Billy Nicholls' "Girl From New York," and July's "My Clown" complete the set.

"My Clown" in particular is an excellent blend of the old Belong and the new Belong. Taking these vocal samples and delaying them nearly beyond recognition, what you're left with is the vague outline of the melody, tracing the medium with your finger. Barely represented but beautiful all the same. "Girl From New York" perhaps best merits a My Bloody Valentine comparison, while William Basinski disintegration looping crops up on "Beeside." There are a lot of excellent reference points that will have already been pointed out by the time I finish writing this, but the moral of the story is that there are a lot of fascinating new possibilities that this EP opens up and it will be thrilling to see what comes next.

If you're more the type to buy hand-cut vinyl than Hallmark cards for your honey, ditch the Godiva and get on Colorloss Record while there are still copies. This ought to make up for all those nights you spent not calling her back because you were too busy "absorbing" In Rainbows back in October. I can't make the language any clearer than that, lover. Good luck out there.