James Ferraro and Spencer Clark are in my dream, dreaming of me dreaming them and their urban gamelan into whorls of incessant mist devotion wild indifferent hot wet eyes and a gentle resonance in the brain leaving silver scars and agonizing autumnal skeins. Wrapped in a mantle of blue, blue-black, silver dust and concrete trees, splayed across the deafening landscape with aplomb, like the last train out to the last village in the last continent flowing towards inexorable endless winter with a hint of the joy and laughter of spring; summer in a thousand angry leaves, branches twisting to the anguished cry of some forgotten birds, perched on rocks of their own design and calling not for the sake of mere communication, but because they have to call, else they?d be ripped apart on winds emanating from the Western seas. Rising through the garbage tide of a empty room, Blotted in an incredible mess of dark colours, and again/reappearing to take the theme/Some little distance, like fishing boats developing from the/land different parabolas/Taking the exquisite theme far, into farness, to Land?s End/to the ends of the Earth!

Oh and the rhythmic cycle itself is an instrument the Skaters pluck and wind and shake with sweaty arms and pulsing foreheads, ringing imaginary life out of shuddering squalor, and the Javanese ruptured cry rising and falling with the music, but in the music, and as the music, as the music is a cloak covering the cry and giving it warmth, presence, sometimes peaking through the tape reels with a the clarity of a half-remembered dream sensation. The music of half-sleep. The music of the sky fading into your temples. The fact that so much has already been said about The Skaters is wonderful ? people seem to be totally embracing this band with a oneness and understanding (if only attempted through garbled imagery?but at the same time, how can such music be approached except through the written reflection of the effect the music has on one?s psyche? Don?t gimme all that comparative this, historical that, don?t write about music as if it were a rabbit you?re dissecting in biology class, like this is some test and there is a correctness and an incorrectness?), which seems to be aiding them to put out CD-R after beautifully packaged CD-R of devotional drone fuzz-sun across an increasing number of well-respected labels and distros. Long may this foster a continuation of these sounds, without any fan-base call for a ?record deal? or ?real, fully available album?. Music like this, Dark Rye Bread, Ferraro?s Wooden Cupboard, Rippling Whispers, Crowned Purple Gowns, Receding Smokebath and the rest has already proved the obsoleteness of these things, proved that the Skaters thrive in the undercurrent and the poetic, and are currently blowing the dust out of the eyes of everyone searching for that warm evening anticipation bursting brain-fix.

And now some moaning effervescent globe of orange and orange-black, brown and murky magenta, shuddering and swaying on a combination of organ hum and vocal drone. And then more of the different same-ness, some actually physically struggling to emerge from the speakers, such is the swamp of sound that the Skaters create. Yes I need to see Skaters live before they are subsumed into the backlit canopy of the god of feedback and trees, and yes the artwork for this one (on Olsen?s American Tapes) is some of the best I?ve seen from them. 9/10 -- Evan Rhodes (27 June, 2006)