Port-Royal - Flares
[Resonant]

Port-Royal come from Genoa, Italy, a city most recently famous for its police force’s horrific treatment of anti-G8 protesters in 2001. News pictures flew around the world of young, innocent people curled-up on cold, hard tarmac with groups of storm troopers breaking their bones. A beautiful, historic city became the setting for a modern-day bloodbath.

Port-Royal’s music is the opposite of this violence. It is calm, reassuring and comforting. But the scale of it is massive. It’s huge like Sigur Ros are huge – epic soundscapes as big as a continent. Its effects-laden guitars spill out of the speakers and wrap themselves around everything in the room before they are ripped apart by an electronic drum beat that sweeps in for a few seconds before disappearing again.

It’s ambient post-rock, like Brian Eno remixed by Mogwai. As delicate as anything Eno has ever done, but with a power behind it that bolsters and strengthens the sound and vocal samples that sound like Mogwai’s early stuff; low, behind the music, like distant radio signals picked-up from space interfering with your stereo.

The album isn’t built around singles, ballads, floor-fillers. It works as a stand alone piece, not meant to be picked-at. Two of the tunes are spread over three tracks each, movements that reek of an interpretation of classical works. There isn’t anything punchy and instant here, and to be honest, that can be a let down. The album keeps the soundscapes going throughout, the atmosphere intact, but maybe it could have done with some more catchy melody in places.

But Flares is the sort of music that you should play quietly. It isn’t made to be analysed and scrutinised, it should be played at very low volume so you’re just able to hear it, so that it fills the room like incense. The 78 minute length of it is a soundtrack of sorts, one meant to colour-in whatever you are doing.