Friends of Dean Martinez
Lost Horizon + Live At Club 2

THE REVIEW

Friends of Dean Martinez: "Lost Horizon"
(2005)

Bill Elm, increasingly alone in composition and touring, has grown, and grown significantly, perhaps precisely because he has disconnected from the troupe, and with it the once useful but now cumbersome baggage of a certain south-western sound, Morricone style, which recognizes him as a master of soundtrack-style soundscapes. True perhaps at one time, but from "Under the Waves" (2003) onwards times have changed. Gradually, without abrupt breaks, without abandoning a poetry dear and familiar to himself and to the fans, Bill Elm has perfected himself, studied (himself), and refined himself, like a good wine that has been able to mature according to its own times and rhythms.
"Lost Horizon" is not a mass-produced product, it does not come out just to ensure the fulfillment of the contract, it is a further step on the ladder of increasing quality, moving towards a mature, outgoing, vibrant, experimental, and courageous sound, while at the same time but in the opposite direction a descent into the rich inner imagery of its creator, a careful observer of an external and internal reality. Those who followed him in the 90s with the similar-Calexico western folk of "Atardecer", "A Place In The Sun", "Wichita Lineman", can no longer abandon him after the restless and daring post-rock of the new millennium of "Under the Waves", "Random Harvest" and "Lost Horizon". Those who did not know him arrive at the right moment.

Friends of Dean Martinez: "Live at Club 2"
(first edition: 2001; second edition: 2005)

Considering the evolution of Dean Martinez's friend, was another release really necessary in the same year, moreover, a reissue of an old 2001 concert that re-proposes the old repertoire? The fact that this live reissue is paired with a "regular" release of a studio album shows that it is not a commercial operation to fill a temporary void; instead, I lean towards a philological hypothesis, a historical-genetic discourse that alongside the more mature fruit of Bill Elm's work ("Lost Horizon") explains "how it all began."
Here indeed is a European (Berlin) live dated 2001 that in addition to a high-level performance offers a reinterpretation of the old repertoire, the western/Morricone style/similar-Calexico to be concise, in the key of a wild experimentation, deconstruction, fusion that reveals the embryo of what would have been the subsequent creative horizon of its deus ex machina; the old material becomes a playground, ironic demystification, unleashed parody of itself and breaking of any recognizable scheme, the one that would lead to the gradual, spontaneous definition of a very personal and unique style, the inimitable trademark of today's Friends of Dean Martinez, singers of the desert, of the prairie, of a post-rock musically oblique America but determined to walk on its own legs.