In The Gloaming

2004, Dreamland Recordings

In addition to Non Resurgam, Henry Flower also has another EP available for download courtesy of Dreamland Recordings: 2004’s In The Gloaming. Although Non Resurgam isn’t exactly song-based to begin with, In The Gloaming is much more drone-oriented, with huge caverns of guitar noise—sometimes graceful and pretty, sometimes harsh and noisy.

In other words, think Sigur Rós, minus the gigantic climaxes and Hopelandic wailing, with maybe some splashes of Windy & Carl’s dronery and AMP’s sonic explorations appearing here and there.

The four songs on In The Gloaming are all inspired by the paintings of Claude Monet, J. M. W. Turner, Ken Bushe, and Mark Rothko.

Rothko especially comes to mind during “Tin Sea”; its deep wells of sound end up enveloping you in the same manner as Rothko’s deeply colorful spaces. Meanwhile, the EP’s final track, “January”, would make for an appropriate soundtrack for Monet’s “Dusk”, with its sparse, formless guitar figures drifting over a shimmering horizon of sound.

Non Resurgam

2004, Dreamland Recordings

According to the notes for Henry Flower’s Non Resurgam, the EP’s four songs were created by improvising guitar lines through various effects boxes, then processing them with sine waves and found sounds. Which might lead one to believe the songs are cold, academic, avant-garde pieces. Which couldn’t really be further from the truth.

Sure, you hear those sine waves and found sounds, but they’re not really the primary focus here. Rather, they exist more in the background, coloring the pieces and filling in the spaces between Flower’s delicate, crystalline guitar meanderings—which prove quite evocative at times.

The title track emanates forth a cascade of echoing, delayed guitars, gentle as a fine spring rain or sunlight filtering through the trees to dapple the ground beneath. “Dreaming Of Oxygen” is a bit darker and more sparse, with soft guitar strums trailing behind like contrails against a vast sky of deep background pulses and oscillations. The EP closes with “Secret History,” another understated guitar-centric piece that seems custommade for soft, breathy female vocals a la Ivy’s Dominique Durand.