While each of the album’s nine tracks can be enjoyed individually, ‘Jettison’ works best when observed as a single piece. Instead, the strings are simpatico with the core instrumentation and layered throughout graciously, as the subtle, climbing opening two-parter Dive demonstrates. The collaboration with fellow Belfast natives Arco String Quartet could easily have lead to a case of too many cooks. On ‘Jettison’, they make it especially beautiful.
The end result is the band’s most ambitious work to date – a 40-minute opus that incorporates symphonic movements, elements of African highlife music, Irish trad/folk and the colossal riffage we have come to expect from the Northern Irish quartet.ĪSIWYFA’s work has always been innately hopeful, eschewing the complex navel-gazing inclination of their contemporaries in favour of seeking moments of ecstasy through interlocking melodies, rhythmic propulsion and interplay. No doubt as inspired by film scores as their peers, the album was conceived by guitarist Rory Friers as an audio-visual project and brought to life by the band in collaboration with Connor O’Boyle and the Arco String Quartet, visual artist Sam Wiehl, and featuring cryptic, spoken-word dialogue from singer-songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle and Clutch frontman Neil Fallon. However, it’s never been more applicable than it is to their latest full-length, ‘Jettison’. This adjective has been applicable to the music of And So I Watch You From Afar ever since the mathy strains of their self-titled debut album first hit the airwaves. It would only make sense that some of its most seminal acts have made the crossover into soundtrack work – Explosions In The Sky have scored four films (including Friday Night Lights and Lone Survivor) and one television series, while Mogwai’s familiar noodlings have graced works ranging from documentaries on legendary enigmatic footballers to contemporary Italian crime dramas. Fitting, given the grandiose crescendos and sky reaching soundscapes that have come to typify the genre. “Cinematic” is an adjective that is often tossed around when it comes to post-rock music.
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