MUSIC REVIEWS

Reviews of "All The Animals of the Forest".

Appearing in Dream Magazine issue #8 March 2008. Page 93. Sweet.

Nine gorgeous new instrumental tracks by this ace Oklahoma outfit. First it's a glimmering glimpse, then it's a brilliant insinuating nocturnal folk rock raga. Next it's a gentle jazz folk track that feels like dawn rising up and taking you along with it. Then a Middle Eastern hashish mystery unfolds and envelopes the room in perfumed haze. By Hot Ham Water there's a rustic country flavor to the dusty trail but a clear clarion saxophone shines through and twirls like a leaf caught by a capricious wind. What Todd Was Just Doing is like Joe Meek falling asleep and dreaming of ghosts. The following track makes me think of Fred Neil a bit at first but soon it's more like some lost Turkish mantra. The final over sixteen minute track is the most reminiscent of their previous work. All in all, an essential listening experience.

We get a mention in the Ptolemaic Terrascope's online version of Rumbles in August 2007: They're nice people.

Finally, for Digitalis, I’m pretty certain, Anvil Salute offer a live set recorded in 2005. Filled with drifting psychedelia, and primal percussion as well as creaking, rumbling improvisations, the music is intense and alive, the players showing a great understanding of dynamics with the music flowing and building with charm and flair. Very percussive in nature, the band make great use of their skills on both “Snaps and Claps” and “Jive Talking”, the latter being particularly vibrant. From the same band comes “New Crusader Of The 11th Commandment”, a studio recording the runs joyfully through the blessed pastures first discovered by the Jewelled Antler collective. Filled with hypnotic acoustic playing and underground rustlings, the album is 44 minutes of instrumental wyrd-folk happiness, just let it wash over you. (www.maritimefist.com). To end this trio of albums, Anvil Salute have released another live recording “All The Animals Of The Forest”, which continues the quality with “Golden Spiral” and the title track being strong examples of the bands sound, the latter reminding me of United Bible Studies in its structure.(www.lofishit.com)

Posted on Animal Psi, August, 30, 2007:

Introductions are well past over, so let’s get straight to business: ‘All the Animals of the Forest’ is the newest long-player from Oklahoma’s totally fantastic and always enjoyable Anvil Salute. Following the thirty second thumb-pianoed intro “Intro”, “Shape to Endless Middle” breaks through with multi-part, sitar-vibrato guitars and percussion by the many hands of Vishnu, the full band regularly leaning back into a refrain nearly identical to the central theme of Lambchop’s ‘How I Quit Smoking’. Bumped-up from the regular AS cast of six to a platoon of nine, the album’s nine tracks share more than an uncanny aesthetic with the out-folk of Jackie-O Motherfucker; in addition, the social function of the music is contained in the unrestraint of the players, free to come and go within the song as we imagine they do the session, inverting the traditional cage of the recording booth into a limitless space of natural light and flocks of notes which travel to old age. Tracks like “Golden Spiral” and the unfortunately-titled “Hot Ham Water” are a grateful celebration of this fact, looping guitar-founded jubilees ala Jackie-O’s ‘Magick Fire Music’ plus central saxophone contributions recalling Do Make Say Think in the finest throes of ‘&Yet & Yet’. The darker tune “Abduction” follows a similar suit, possibly a tribute to the Sun City Girls, but for reference sake, much more akin to the post-rock semi-jazz of Tortoise. Indeed, the band’s tight, theme-based method does place them some where near the improvisation of jazz while still retaining the rock instrumental elements found in Thrill Jockey, etc. releases by the likes of Town and Country, Grails, or The Kingsbury Manx. “From One to One through One”, not to be confused with the similarly named Double Leopards work, is a calamitous (by comparison) raga busied by actual sitar, hand- and drummed-percussion, and locked into an even tighter spiral sans the special drive of a solo instrument. Following such indulgence, it is impressive they might restrict a piece like “What Todd Was Just Doing” to just one minute thirty: a minimal, far more nuanced piece of drum and acoustic with a rare focus on a diminished electric guitar, it could easily be expanded into a track four times its length, or as the band has chosen to do, use it as a build up to “Most Eloquent Combination of Letters”, a full-piece of similar focus on electric guitar noodling, glittering with chimes, the band never before as reminiscent of DMST and the cheerier side of Godspeed. It’s best that you know it going in, but the title-track finale is a 16 minute lead-out of sporadic percussion bursts, meandering guitar and other such strings – a slow-burning, fluttery raga that mounts a western nod in the back few, but ultimately wants to segue into your next great adventure. The timeless patina of the bold yellow jewel-cased cartoon art and absence of superfluous info places this disc anywhere in the last forty years, making it that much more of a classic.

Posted on Foxy Digitalis, Tuesday, August 7, 2007:

This is a LoFi Shit release but in fact it is anything but. Lo-fi, maybe, but definitely not shit. Looking at the cartoonish cover illustrations, I didn’t expect much from “All the Animals of the Forest”. It took me a while to work through the review pile and to realize that this stunning cdr is full of wonderful [sic.] folk pop tracks that blend strings, percussion, the occasional sax and a lot of other instruments to create tracks that are sometimes meticulously arranged and sometimes more like a free jazz session. Nine musicians are listed in the insert but the Anvil Salute websites says the Oklahoma-based band currently consists of six people.

Anvil Salute’s earlier releases include tracks for the Digitalis “Wailing Bones” series and the “Gold Leaf Branches” compilation, the Foxglove cdr “A Discreet History of Bone”, “New Crusaders of the 11th Commandment” on the band’s own Maritime Fist Glee Club imprint and a self-titled cassette on Nerd Party Records. With its independence and its playful interest in bucolic sounds and sonic landscaping, “All the Animals of the Forest” shares more than one attribute with recent freefolk releases. But as it replaces narrative structures by repetitive, non-linear patterns, the album does also work within an electronic or advanced indie context. Some tracks, like the magnificient “Shape to Endless Middle”, remind me of the instrumental tracks of American Analog Set, all grace and unobtrusive beauty. Rich percussive textures provide an urgency that is all but contained by an assuring bass and a guitar that keeps moving in and out of line, as if exploring the thicket on both sides of the hypnotic highway that is this track.

“Shape to Endless Middle” is my favourite track on this album but honestly it doesn’t get much less inspiring than that for just under an hour. Next up, for example, is “Golden Spiral” with a brilliant saxophone part that is carried by a rhythm both diverse and played super tight. Sunblessed and a hymn to the beauty of the world, this album infuses you with an overwhelming sense of freedom. In that it can be compared to “Eingya” by Helios or to some North Sea tracks. Elsewhere, the psychedelic mantras of the last Grails album come to mind. This recording gives testimony, to me at least, of how much the independent music scene has to offer. Even if the final – and title – track is a bit too long and fails to build up dramatic effect: A decent booklet and / or a nicer packaging would have earned this lo-fi shit full credits. 9/10