Port-Royal, Afraid to Dance

reviewed by dave heaton

Afraid to Dance is a funny title for this album of drifting, floating, asleep-in-a-sunbeam music. At first it seems like electronic ambient music (though perhaps that's the influence of the retro-future cover art, how it evokes Boards of Canada), but most of what we hear is played on guitar. And in fact, the label's website describes the Italian group as a "guitar collective". Yet so often the guitar playing and the electronics and whatever else they're playing all meld together into a cloud. Sometimes a noisy cloud ("Pauline Bokour"), but even then gently so. But other times not a cloud in terms of density at all: light, streamlined, breezy, with melodies playing around and about the atmosphere. Beautiful music, and epic: tall, wide, surrounding music.

{www.resonantlabel.com}