Goff's Pick of the Week- Stay Down by Two Lone Swordsman

Imagine you are going to a dance party. You put on a nice shirt, strap on your dancing shoes, and of course don’t forget your scuba gear. If Two Lone Swordsmen are DJing, one of those three items I just described would be absolutely vital to your enjoyment of the party, and it’s not the shoes or the shirt. On their album Stay Down, Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood aka Two Lone Swordsmen create tunes that could only be enjoyed with the proper equipment, that equipment being water wings and a swim suit. Featuring beats that bubble up from the bottom of the sea, everything is slower on Stay Down; it’s something that you might imagine hearing if you were to put your ear to a sea shell. At the same time however the music is able to stay true to that aesthetic without ever wading out of waters suitable for dancing. They manage to draw the line between ambient and dance pretty well. There are few albums that I listen to of this same genre that are danceable but interesting to listen to at the same time on their own, but Stay Down manages to draw from both worlds of music, enticing the listener to do just what the title suggests.

One of the first things that I feel when I listen to something from that same era as Two Lone Swordsmen is how dated it sounds. Electronic acts like Drexciya (who also drew heavily from underwater themes) among others just sound old. It’s the way the electronic equipment Im assuming they all had access to sounded at the time, with those popping very sudden beats. Stay Down has that too, but it is limited enough in that it doesn’t sound like an album from that era, but rather an album paying tribute to it. It is there just enough so that the music could evoke a sense of nostalgia without sounding terribly dated.

Another aspect of the album that I enjoy is that you could probably turn it up as loud as you like and it would likely never sound too loud. Its not a loud album to begin with, and its those albums I find to be the best to listen to loudly. With something like punk or thrash metal, the music is already pretty abrasive, and if you need to turn it up to get the desired loud effect than the band isn’t doing its job right. But with music that leans towards ambience, especially music that drones, being able to turn the music up indefinitely  without it hurting your ears or becoming inaudible is an appealing feature. At higher volumes the music can wash over you so to speak, occupy every single space around and inside your head, which is what good ambient music should do anyway.

For the most part Stay Down focus on beat and the ambience behind it. But some of its most appealing moments come when this formula is switched, instead focusing on melody. One such song is Alpha School, but to call it, or any other of the tunes stand out tracks would be silly, as would trying to pull out any ambient track from any good ambient album. And without a doubt Stay Down is a good ambient album.