Emeralds member Mark McGuire has recently put out a bunch of new material (CD-Rs, tapes and the like) via Emeralds' own Wagon label. Why not? Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to give Losing Sleep a listen or two, considering how much I enjoyed his release on Arbor, The Garden of Eternal Life.
Losing Sleep is pretty concise considering it's a form of "ambient" music, but I guess not all forms of ambient need to be 10+ minutes in length in order to be interesting. Every song is pretty much standard McGuire on this album. Not that it's not interesting, but he could've maybe added a few new touches to his music. But then again, it's his music, he doesn't have to like change to make it. Most of the songs are guitar soundscapes that are pretty much laden with reverb and wah wah, giving it a sort of nostalgic feel. I could see fans of Ducktails getting into this.
I wouldn't recommend listening to this on headphones, though. This requires a listen on a stereo to sort of get a physical connection to the music. Like having your bedroom walls just washed in sound. It's a pretty refreshing listen. Another thing about this album is that normally on McGuire's albums, the songs often melt together to make one huge song. If you're going to listen to just one song on the album via your iPod, it wouldn't have the same effect on you as it would on some sort of stereo system.
Nonetheless, Mark McGuire has made another piece of music that's worth getting, but for people looking for new sounds from Mark McGuire, it's nothing new. At all.
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