Wonders Never Cease
Brendan Murray
$12.99
Four years in the making, the music of Brendan Murray’s latest/greatest album of cinematic drone anthems, Wonders Never Cease, was honed during live concerts around New York and New England. Recorded in situ, each track was painstakingly (re)assembled and embellished back at Murray’s studio. While it cannot accurately be called a ‘live album’, the adrenaline thrill of live performance is palpable as soon as the opening howl charges out from the speakers. From the laminal scorch of the opening track, through an electric fizz storm and a breathy hymn for what sounds like harmonica and folding chairs (?), the eyes-wide-open bliss of Wonders is exhilarating. Soulful, melodic and intimate, this is electro-acoustic music as gloriously life-affirming and natural as a sunrise.
Praise for Wonders Never Cease:
“…the opener “Hymn One” is a beautifully rendered drone, like the hurdy-gurdy fantasies of Oren Ambarchi & Johann Berthling rendered by Eliane Radigue. Subtly shifting tonal centers move cautiously beneath the thick shag, twisting and pitch-bending before releasing some truly head-cleaning scrapes and excoriations. (A lovely reprise closes the record, by the way.) “Seize” seems to shift back and forth, a cantilever at its center, almost like a fixed interval that rocks on top of waves of rumbling electronics. (Somehow, this music always suggests nautical imagery to me.) “Hymn Two” is entirely different, breaking through with a huge multi-layered squall, until something like a post-produced harmonica slices through with high lonesome intensity to begin “Seas.” Harmonica tones are stacked and morphed creating the effect of some odd fusion of Harry Partch and Scelsi, with tape machines buckling and clicking along the way until they resolve into a huge shimmering mass garlanded with rain. A superb and oddly emotional record.” – Dusted Magazine
“There are some discs that simply require one to turn the volume knob up several notches and this is one. It wasn’t until I had the opportunity to really crank it that several of the “wonders” (not unfittingly, in three cases, “hymns”) revealed themselves in all their detail.” – Bagatellen
“Murray’s know-how is unquestionable… surely these are hymns sprung from the throats of hell’s angels.” – Squid’s Ear
“It’s right from the very first note that you can feel your hands clasping the back of your chair and your pulse rising. His pieces take their time, yet have a certain kind of urgency and of poignancy… raw and unpolished, they are the delta-blues version of drone music.” – Tokafi
“Blaring hyper-polyphony gives way to field recordings, and in short; one of the smartest releases you can subject yourself to. This took four years to record. Turn volume up. Way up. Intake drug of choice. Play from start to finish. LOUD. Truly gorgeous.” – Debutante Debris
“Wonders Never Cease is Murray‘s finest album to date, and hopefully puts him on the map of great experimental composers.” – Vital Weekly
