Maudlin Of The Well
Part The Second

Well yes. ZOT! The maudlin of the Well together again. When a few months ago, Toby Driver said he intended to resurrect the ensemble responsible for two atomic-lysergic bombs such as Bath and Leaving Your Body Map, I couldn't contain myself anymore. Then came the request for donations to self-produce and distribute the record. Donations came in such quantity that not only was the record recorded, but it is also being distributed for free. And so on May 14th, we found it on PCs all over the world: maudlin of the Well, Part The Second.

The second part: that is, five tracks rediscovered, rearranged, recreated, resurrected from the band's repertoire, thoroughly cleaned up (it's been about eight years since maudlin disbanded). The lineup is the classic one: Toby Driver on guitars, vocals, and "hand claps" (wow), Sam Gutterman on percussion and other instruments, Greg Massi (who also plays in Baliset now) and Josh Seipp-Williams (after maudlin also in the grindsters Triac), Terran Olson on winds. Also joining are some guests, besides the ever-present Mia Matsumiya we have David Bodie, Madeleine Craw, and Jim Fogarty.

Needless to say, upon hearing that the album could be legally (and in high quality) downloaded, I got excited like a little girl. As a true maudlin fan, once I got the record, I booked my 44 minutes and 32 seconds of solitude (that's how long the record lasts) and, with headphones on, I lay down, eyes closed, and pressed play.

Nothing to say, it really is them, the maudlin of the Well: the first track is a new rearrangement based on the imaginative Blue Ghost, which opened the fantastic Bath. The arrangement is more meticulous and layered, yet equally effective. We've returned to that non-dimension that maudlin were capable of creating, this unique way of sinking into the music without drowning, this conscious journey into the subconscious, or this unconscious way of moving in the sonic consciousness.

The record continues with two more revisions and extracts (from 1997!) and then closes with two more recent tracks (2007 and 2005). As a whole, you can feel the change from the old motW: the stylistic mix is much less anchored than before, the sonic material has become more fluid, in a way that reminded me a lot of Choirs of the Eye, the debut of Kayo Dot (in other words, maudlin of the Well 2.0, a record that was also born with the maudlin formation). There are no longer those barriers, which, although blurred, undefined, and imprecise, lived in the music of Bath and Leaving Your Body Map: the sonic amalgam completely overturns echoes of progressive, avant-garde, metal (no screams this time, don't worry), jazz, doomrock, ambient, chamber music, neoclassical contemporary concrete, semytonal indie-core, want more names? I could go on for months until the end of the review, no can do. The maudlin of the Well are musical jugglers, only they play with the unconscious, with what can be heard in dreams, or what can be imagined of sound.

The eleven minutes of Laboratories of the Invisible World are the conclusion that Leaving Your Body Map hadn't granted us, they are a sonic moment (eleven minutes like an infinite second) so high that from up here I look at you and you all seem like ants, like that time I took the plane to Dublin. Without a plane, without ants, and without an informative brochure on emergency procedures (there's no need), but at the same altitude. Even a tad higher. Fantastic, damn it. Let me start this song over again, darling. I want to emulsify myself on the clouds a little longer.

There are no drugs fueling the process (or maybe there are?) yet the sensation that is created is that one, the brain working at 70% of its total efficiency (normally we use 10%), in a dimension where words count for little on their own (the voices, drowned in the sonic mix, sometimes effected and processed), where indeed little truly counts. There are only these five tracks, these forty-four minutes, and the feeling of having witnessed one of the most welcome and at the same time most successful musical comebacks in recent times. Now everyone to their room, headphones on, and Part The Second in the player, come on.