Author: Phil Freeman
Source: The Wire May 2006
The group’s debut, recorded in a Philadelphia church, documents a battle between the participants and their environment. Natural reverberation is the fifth instrument—delicate horn duets shimmer away into ambient haze, as Dan Capecchi’s drums thump and rattle and bassist Matt Engle struggles manfully to make an impact.
Things begin slowly, with Capecchi eliciting sounds very much like feedback from his cymbals, before the horns come in—Rogers droning, Scofield playing slow, beautiful sequences of notes that seem only tenuously connected. But each sound chosen is indisputably right. . .
All [tracks] leave an impression, upon completion, of being neither solipsistic nor beholden to cliché—a small miracle, these days. This calmly assured debut bodes well for the future of all involved.