The first time I heard 1 Mile North, I broke into a huge grin.  I was listening to “In 1983 He Loved To Fly” on the band’s website, and I couldn’t help it; I just started smiling ear to ear.  It wasn’t because the song was infectious or catchy.  In fact, the elements of 1 Mile North’s sound—huge, glacial drifts of sound, gentle synth textures, crystalline guitars, sparse basslines—are about as far as you can get from “catchy”.  Rather, it was due to the band’s sense of atmosphere and space.  It drew me in, enveloping me in a way I didn’t even know I needed to experience until it was already underway.

Traveling through the same expanse as Labradford and Stars Of The Lid, 1 Mile North proves time and again over the album’s 7 tracks that they’re equally proficient at creating vast drifts of sound.  Not surprisingly, the group’s soundscapes are quite lovely to behold.  However, what truly makes their music so compelling and evocative is the emotion that the duo gently weaves into each of their songs.

The imagery that opens Minor Shadows is of an endless December sky, the silhouettes of leafless, lifeless trees etched into the grey horizon.  Early in the album, a sample fades in of a boy describing the joys of flying, concluding that “the only bad thing is you have to come back down to the fucking ground”.  Thankfully, the band never comes anywhere close to Terra Firma during the song.

Echoing guitar notes and haunting synths spiral ever higher into the atmosphere, floating over the houses depicted on the album’s sleeve.  In the song’s final minutes, the hypnotic bassline fades out, forever severing any earthly ties; the guitar grows even more echo-y, forlorn birdcalls and trumpet notes drift back to the listener, and the song floats away somewhere over the horizon.

See what I mean about “compelling and evocative”?

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