Early Day Miners
Placer Found

It's yet another Sunday spent in boredom and detachment.

I woke up at 8 PM after sleeping all day, since like a good idiot I went to bed twelve hours earlier and even struggled to fall asleep.

The last few weeks have been rough, forced to stay home by an ailment that decided to affect the nails on both my big toes, and this illness also prevents me from walking. What is one supposed to do?

Well, nothing, there's nothing to do but wait to heal (a month I've been dealing with this and I still don’t see much improvement, damn the doctor, according to him I should have been lively in a week, ready to roam the cornfields) and then we'll see.

But why would you care about my Sunday? Then again, it's now Monday night. It's 5 AM and today is my nineteenth birthday!

Which I have to spend at home and it will also be the first in my life without my sister.

A bit of a downer, right? It's March 18th and it's snowing! It's freezing cold, it's nighttime, and everything is silent.

I look out the window and the scenery... I mean... no, seriously, it really sucks.

Getting sad for free, so there's nothing better than a good Slowcore album, one with a capital S, but not extended, otherwise it would be SSSlowcore and that's a bit ugly, sounds like the name of a supermarket loyalty card.

And, searching through the collection, I come across 'Placer Found' by Early Day Miners, which always does its job well.

Released in 2000, 'Placer Found' is what is usually defined as a sensational debut, surpassing all subsequent works (even though they still range from good to excellent), and becoming an instant classic of the genre (one of the last, to be honest).

The game, on one hand, is what any follower of the trend knows and already expects: slow tempos, extended and general staticity. The atmospheres are among the most depressed and moribund you can find in the genre, with an omnipresent sense of chill; an icy and unspoiled plain seen at night, no hint of life except ours, while we find ourselves walking there in the middle making a noise that no one can hear anyway, leaving footprints that surely no one will ever see.

Musically, it departs from the classic slowcore motifs traced by Codeine or Red House Painters, leaning instead towards a kind of post-rock of strictly Louisvillian school, among suggestions taken from Slint if not Rodan or the sleepier June Of 44 (round and round we always end up there), solutions sometimes close to what is called guitar-ambient, whispered voice barely making out the words.

And, in the series "influences you would never have thought of if you hadn't been told," in many songs on the album (particularly the splendid 'East Berlin At Night' or 'Longwall') you can trace atmospheres dear to a certain band, a classic, but of a completely different genre: Mineral. If we had put Chris Simpson on vocals, 'Placer Found' might have sounded almost like 'Endserenading'. But it's irrelevant.

It's obviously not music for the light-hearted (I don't even need to tell you), nor is it very summery - despite always and anyway imparting its magic - and, above all, the happy should steer clear.

But anyway, no one here is happy!