Review || Virginia Wing - Ecstatic Arrow


We’ve quietly loved Virginia Wing for a few years now and just as their work was hitting a comfortable and not overly predictable groove they have changed direction again on Ecstatic Arrow. 

 

We’re not entirely sure if the title references The Arrow of Time principle (if you’re not a physicist go check that out) but it certainly feels so, given the previous album’s title, Constant Forward Motion, essentially the same principle. Whilst that album was drenched in production in the most gorgeous of ways it was obvious you couldn’t continue that route. Ecstatic Arrow then is a minimalist take on the themes of that album, also bringing in some of the avant-garde experimentalism of collaboration album with Xam Duo, Tomorrow’s Gift.  

This brings a nice balance of harmony and clarity that shifts the proverbial arrow forward nicely. Highlights include the synth funk imbued Glorious Idea and the minimalist-electro ode to science, Relativity. The latter’s chorus really spoke to the mind of this writer particularly and the segue into the brilliantly titled For Every Window There’s A Curtain, with it’s electro-jazz styling's is well thought out.

Looking beyond the tracks themselves though the album as a whole is very cohesive, mixing post-millennial self-doubt, forward thinking synth-woven musings on life passing and concepts of movement. It’s almost a scientific experiment in the form of an album and that’s certainly not a bad thing. Perhaps the starkest song of them all is the resigned yet forward focussed Eight Hours Don’t Make A Day, detailing the dissatisfaction of a daily grind and, in another album theme, time and the feeling of it’s passing. This could be the group’s most artistically satisfying album yet and we’d certainly recommend checking it out.

Ecstatic Arrow is out now on FIRE Records

#SRCZ 


Popular Posts