Arc and Sender
Arc and Sender
High Two
You don’t see too many album covers featuring the separated blue and red tints of 3-D, nor ones that feature photographs of what looks like Martian landscape from a rover mission. The latter is slightly indicative of Arc and Sender’s Tatooine-exotic soundscapes wrought from otherworldly guitar tones (“Squares and Circles”), and the cantina blooze on “Light Pain” is an unexpected highlight. These guys really, truly love Mogwai, though, and the idea that guitars are best used as blunt instruments. There’s little put forward on tracks like “Hundred-Year Flood” and “Semblance” that doesn’t bear a striking resemblance to a certain Scottish band’s tinnitus-inducing power waltz, but the band soldiers on through deep space ambiance in the album’s final two tracks to disperse the solid terra firma riffery. They might not reach Bradbury-ian heights as far as Mars evocation goes, but at least they do their cover art justice.
High Two: http://www.hightwo.com
