Bleep

After dropping a few LPs on Erased Tapes, A Winged Victory For The Sullen now debut on Ninja Tune with new album The Undivided Five. However, this change of surroundings does not signal any great stylistic shift in the project’s music - the duo of Dustin O’Halloran and Adam Wiltzie (Stars Of The Lid, The Dead Texan) continue to go deep on their widescreen contemporary classical sound here.

The Undivided Five is another record with grand ambitions from A Winged Victory For The Sullen. Indeed, so cinematic are these compositions you could join them up with much of the music they have previously written for film and television. From the swelling strings of opener ‘Our Lord Debussy’ to the intimate, spare piano chords on final track ‘Keep It Dark, Deutschland’, everything here is designed with the intention of stoking strong emotion in the listener.

O’Halloran and Wiltzie have clearly paid great attention to detail in both the composition and recording of The Undivided Five. The use of granular synthesis and time-stretched textures provides their compositions with yet more space, while that aforementioned piano is recorded with such depth that it fills out the track on its own. The influence of contemporaries Sigur Ros and Olafur Arnalds - both residents of Iceland, O’Halloran’s new home - remains as strong as ever in the pair’s aesthetic.

A Winged Victory For The Sullen offer intense drones, sweeping ambiences and tender classical compositions on their latest full-length The Undivided Five.