#rob winstone

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Beach / Rob Winstone (Album : butterflies, Label: Warm Winters Ltd)

Rob Winstone returns to Warm Winters with a suite of countryside reflections: tape-cracked disintegrations, field recordings, solo piano improvisations, saturated loops and the odd side-long epic that flutter away from the chaos of city life. RIYL William Basinski or The Humble Bee.

For the longest time, Winstone has used his music to unravel his toughest emotional experiences, cloistering his unpleasant feelings in the dark, abstract soundscapes that rooted 'I Dreamt We Found A Way' and its mappa-released follow up 'sifting through heaven'. 'butterflies' doesn't shift completely from the sound of its predecessors, but it's marked by some serious life changes. Since we last heard from him, Winstone has moved from the city into the countryside, where a more bucolic life has eroded some of the stresses and strains that weighed on him in Bristol. The title came when Winstone noticed the UK's low insect levels last year by the absence of butterflies, but also because it's a feeling that he's not been used to in his adult life, and looks forward to getting it back. 

The title track is, in fact, the strongest link to Winstone's prior material, with its distant ringing and gloomy, foghorn-like pads. But behind the moans there's a sense that something - maybe a cloud - has shifted. And certainly, by 'over my head and out the window', the mood has evolved, with church choirs and rumbling tape loops colliding to create a euphoric hymnal. But the central point is the 20-minute 'say goodbye to the birds', where Winstone juxtaposes a looped voice with hypnotic drones and detuned piano improvisations, writing an operatic narrative that carries the album's ambition. Even the more humbly-titled 'untitled piano IV' is surprisingly epic, and unexpectedly effervescent.