Dan Lyth & The Euphrates - Benthic Lines

Imagine a less conversational Arab Strap and you're part of the way to describing the laidback sounds of Dan Lyth & The Euphrates. They employ a broader sonic palate (brass and glitchy, grimy electronica fill out dreamy second track 'Four Creatures') and there's far less melancholy but it's there nevertheless in the eight examples of the band's lovelorn sound available here.

Benthic Lines is the group's first album in this incarnation and you could probably describe what they do as chamber pop. Yet it has folk elements mingled into it along with parts that recall Philip Glass (viz the backing vocals on 'Earth Broke Its Vow') thereby making them an interesting and hard to pin down prospect.

Five years in the making Lyth's intention was to record as much of the work as possible outdoors, no matter what the climate in Dunfermline or further afield threw at him and the band. Whether the results of that effort are actually very evident in the overall sound across the eight tracks is hard to say. No shouted demands to get off property or lorry reversing noises make their way inadvertently into the mix so in the main the listener has to take it on faith that fields and rooftops were stood upon as the tracks were laid down.

There is though quite a feeling of spaciousness, or at least of not being overly enclosed, within the album's production so that's maybe attributable in the end to the trips to Uganda, Australia, Turkey etc. more than talented work behind the mixing desk. Whatever the minutiae of the process and hoops gone through or imposed for the making of the work the results more than adequately speak for themselves. Benthic Lines could well herald the advent of a contemporary act to rival the cult status of The Blue Nile. 

 Benthic Lines is available from iTunes (here) or from Armellodie Records (here).