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Artist
Valley of the Giants
12+ albums
post-rockexperimentalambientCanadianpost rock
about
Over the years a few individuals have been able to capture the wandering, dust-caked, sonic isolation of Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone, transferring the Italian's love of the West into indie rock emotional detachment. Yo La Tengo. Pell Mell. Early Calexico. Giant Sand/Howe Gelb. The list is a short one, but a revered one. Valley of the Giants is the latest outfit deserving of keeping such illuminated company. And their self-titled debut is an amazing wash of melancholic instrumentation, forlorn vocalization, and enough sun choked, cacti laced ambiance to fill the soundtracks of at least a dozen alternative Westerns. In fact, while VOTG owe a debt to the images of Leone and the soundscapes of Morricone, they are in truth more aligned with the works of Alejandro Jordorowsky (El Topo), delivering an array of music that is far more skewed than it is traditional. But then nothing about this "supergroup"—the loose knit combo is comprised of members of Broken Social Scene, Shalabi Effect, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Strawberry, and Do Make Say Think--is traditional. Hell, on paper the album looks more like an EP than a full-length, that is until you realize that the bulk of the eight tracks included all exceed 6-minutes (one is an epic even 10-minutes!). And with a rotating cast of 12 musicians, it's more like a mini-orchestra than an indie rock ensemble. The album packaging itself is highly indicative of the aural array to be found on the disc itself. Rendered in a somewhat w
