Man this is confusing, so bear with me. It's gonna be a mess of punctuation and exotic character-sets, listen up. This 10" is a limited edition split on Three:Four Records between :take: and White/Lichens, and is Volume 1 of the three:four split series. :take: is the solo project of Jérôme Boutinot, a guitarist based in Paris, and member of post-rock band Stereogrammes. White/Lichens is the ongoing collaboration of Chicago-based Lichens, and White/Light. Lichens of course is the solo project of 90 Day Men-man Robert A. A. Lowe. White/Light is a duo comprised of Jeremy Lemos and Matt Clark; Lemos is a live/studio sound engineer. With me so far?

:take:'s contribution, A1 "Paysage Avec Fer" (5.15) and A2 "Joie de Résistance" (6.52) is some exceedingly pretty guitar-and-effects tinker which betrays its creator's post-rock involvement, engages at a sufficiently emotionally-impactful level and for a wee minute there even reminds quite strongly of some lovely old work by Terry Riley. On the other hand, White/Lichens' side "Tonight's the Night" (11.20) has nothing apparently to do with Neil Young's seminal drug-slob album/song of the same name and unfortunately is not very good. It's thin, dull, and bears all the hallmarks of having been tossed off in about 12 minutes and 20 seconds -- all the things you DON'T want from your drone. Sorry, guys, if you spent an hour or a day or a week or even a year creating this; it doesn't convey. If someone was going around asking "hey, raise your hands if you're a Lichens fan", I would have no hesitation whatsoever in lifting both mitts to the heavens; this effort here however would not be what I would be playing to anyone else in order to get them on the Lichens bus with me. 4/10 -- Young Savage (7 October, 2009)