Belong: Common Era (Vinyl LP)

Repress of 2011 album. Itʼs been five years since the last Belong long player, as the duo works slowly to organise their sound works. Both the time invested, and the wait, have been well rewarded with this return.

Common Era shows extraordinary progression from that first album of dense, scorched earth instrumentals, hints of a new direction having been revealed on the Colorless Record EP from 2008 which contained covers of four should-have-been classics from the original psychedelic era.

The new material has such common pop elements as “songs”, vocals and drum machines, but the results could hardly be called conventional and are like little else happening on the current “scene”. The songs themselves are akin to radio transmissions received from another time and place, just as likely to be the future as the past, or even from a contemporary alternate universe.

They are both passionate and dispassionate, grey yet technicolour, ghostly and palpable, distant yet immediate, grainy and focused. Upon listening these conceptual contradictions are dismissed with ease, as the recordings reveal that they fit all of these descriptors simultaneously, an extraordinary balancing act.

1. Come See
   
2. Never Came Close
3. A Walk
   
4. Perfect Life
5. Keep Still
   
6. Different Heart
7. Make Me Return
   
8. Common Era
   
9. Very Careful