PLANK - Future of the Sea [CD]

Golden Lion Sounds

£11.32

Format: CD
Catalogue No.: GLS012CD
Barcode: 5060168043948
Release Date: 20 Jan 2023
Genre: Prog-Rock / Instrumental-Rock

Golden Lion Sounds is an independent record label that runs out of the cultural, community and party hub The Golden Lion in Todmorden. It specialises in limited, collectable and exclusive vinyl releases that are largely sourced from local acts and those who have played at the venue. These include Working Men's Club, Jarvis Cocker, The Lounge Society, Gnod, The Lovely Eggs, David Holmes, Crazy P, Jane Weaver, The Orielles to name a few. Todmorden based Plank's 'Future Of the Sea' will be the first full length album released by the label.

- Final instalment of the trilogy of albums from Manchester-via-Todmorden based PLANK.
- Very Limited run of black vinyl LP.
- Video coming for lead single 'Three Seascapes'

It seems fitting that a trilogy of albums celebrating nature should conclude some eight years after its second chapter. Manchester-via-Todmorden based instrumental trio Plank’s first two LPs – 2012’s kosmiche-inspired Animalism and 2014’s more expansive and structurally disruptive follow-up Hivemind – enjoyed relatively quick gestation periods. However, Plank are firm believers in letting nature run its course, and so it is that their third LP Future of the Sea arrives early in 2023. “I always knew I wanted to make three albums inspired by nature” says Plank main-man David Rowe (synths / guitar). “Future of the Sea is another exploration into odd time signatures and traditional rock instruments alongside synths and electronics.”

“Future of the Sea is a celebration of the power and majesty of our oceans and how humankind has been destroying them through industrial scale fishing and global warming” says Rowe. “Rachel Carson put it more eloquently in her book The Sea Around Us: ‘It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.’” A post apocalyptic underwater city scape adorns the cover in an illustration by Jake Blanchard, whose work you'll also see on Richard Dawson's latest album 'The Ruby Cord'.

The synthetic nature of Plank’s sprawling rock odysseys feel at their most pronounced on Future of the Sea which leans to the band’s love of Pink Floyd era Meddle, Camel, film score composers like John Carpenter and Vangelis, 70s experimentalists Harmonia, 1980s King Crimson and 90s post-rock adjacent group Tortoise. In polyrhythmic dexterity if not heaviness, Plank also take some influence from Meshuggah, and it’s in their movement between the 16 minute final album track’s sections that it feels most prominent. They swerve from crunching stoner rock jams to more ambient spatial explorations, crescendoing progressive peaks, 80s synth pop and finally a crushing riff-laden finale.

Tracklisting
1. Three Seascapes
2. Dead Zone
3. Red Tide
4. Volta Do Mar
5. Longshore Drift
6. Breaking Waves Part 1
7. Breaking Waves Part 2
8. Breaking Waves Part 3
9. Breaking Waves Part 4
10. Breaking Wave Part 5
11. Breaking Waves Part 6