In this relatively obscure debut,
Midnight Choir's
Al DeLoner and mentor/producer
Chris Eckman (
the Walkabouts) assembled a fluid orchestral album of accordions, pianos, clarinets, slide guitars, and long, drawn-out ambient patterns. It was a simple, sparse mixture with obvious soundtrack origins, frequently executed with the proper amount of disturbing subtlety. In "The Big Picture" and "The Confrontation," the band summoned up the collaborative textures of Allinson/Brown's AV 1 and
Tangerine Dream's opulent work on Ridley Scott's Legend, but "Washington Fall" worked on different levels, an equally peaceful and unsettling experience of touchingly eclectic pastoral charms. ~ Dean Carlson