Cloudland Canyon Lie in Light by: Dan Osmolowski Wed:23-Apr-08 Label: Kranky Year: 2008 WB rating 40 out of 100

I knew a stoner once, and I’ve hated myself ever since*. “Stop listening to Goddamn Saucerful Of Secrets, get off your arse and do something with your life, you lazy so-and-so,” I used to say. I was the last friend this guy had but I couldn’t take his lethargy any more. So I left him. There on his couch, where he had spent most of his life to that point and the rest of his life from then on. He would have liked Cloudland Canyon. Perhaps if I had access to the giant reefer pictured on the inside sleeve of Lie In Light, I would like it too.

Alas, this album will have to be judged on its own merits; free from the influence of aural beer goggles. On this American/German duo’s second album, gone is the minimalist deft hand, the experimental dynamics and the post-rock influences of 2006’s requiems der natur 2002 - 2004. In its place is unashamed imitation, drone, space-rock and general tedium. Upon listening to ‘White Woman’ (a small but indicative example) I couldn’t help but lament the fact that this was six minutes in my life that I would never get back – it’s that dull.

Of Lie In Light’s seven songs, there are only four I would actually classify as ‘music’, where any thought beyond “Let’s get ripped and jam with some washy synths and reverberated guitars” has occurred. On opener, “Krautwerk” it’s not only the name of the song that is referential; its motorik style is so blatantly plagiarised from German greats NEU!, that it really does leave one scratching their head in bemusement. The production is horrid; at times it sounds like two bands playing the same song out of synch in a giant, wet, paper box being recorded by a cassette two-track through a $15 Dick Smith Electronics microphone. Its not psychedelic, it’s just shit.

The difference between Cloudland Canyon and the work of contemporaries who mine similar territory is that Lie In Light is devoid of any real selling point. On Deerhunter’s Cryptograms, the noise experiments are sonically intense; they provide a genuine atmosphere and a counterpoint to the rest of the album’s more straight-ahead rock efforts. In Bradford Cox’s other project, Atlas Sound, melodies, intricacy and subtlety abound; the songs stick upside your head instantly. Lie In Light is no better than the sort of stuff that Sydney’s now-defunct Drop City was whacking on b-sides and EPs (to much greater effect, I might add) in the mid 90s as some self-indulgence – just because they could, not because they thought people would actually listen to it and snap it up like discounted fridges at a Boxing Day sale. ‘Heme’ and ‘Mothlight Part 1’ sound just enough like Boards of Canada and Spacemen 3/Spiritualized to rouse you out of a coma but why cop an inferior facsimile when you can go straight to the original? And 'Scheisse Schatzi, Auf Wiedersehen!' is only really worth mentioning for its title.

There are those that argue that Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey can only make sense when you are stoned or on acid. I’m willing to accept that this may be the case. The difference between this and Lie In Light, however, is that 2001 is a masterpiece regardless of whether you’ve sucked down a Jamaican kutchie or have just had one too many Turkish coffees.

*Credit to the immortal Hunter S Thompson.