review from ampcamp.com -

Scotland has something of a reputation for producing artists who are influenced by their surroundings; the tranquility of the Highlands, the pastoral landscape and the scarcity of human habitation outside of the urban centers of gritty Glasgow, cultured Edinburgh and miserable Aberdeen no doubt seeps into the musical blood of the small countrys artists and provokes either a fierce reaction to, or interpretation of, the existence they are born into. Ayrshires ambient atmospheric duo De Trop follow the former category, the high-road that fellow country-men Mogwai and Arab Strap have walked down, utilizing beauty, isolation, and material deprivation to creative effect.

I Will Just Sit And Wait Until Your Face Leaves My Mind is Colin Laughland and Krist Moran of De Trops sophomore effort and like their debut After The Water, is released through Skean Dhu, a label located in Ohio that has meticulously crafted a rooster of bands over the past few years that define the labels tribal, experimental, organic ambient music.
Jezebel, arguably the best track and the only song to contain vocals in the form of an
evangelical warning of the tale of Jezebel and Ahabs contemporary relevance to marriage; that no Jezebel exists without an Ahab. The narrators passage starts as a composed lesson with splashes of tremolo and lethargic acoustic strums that increase in volume and strength to counter the gradual ferocity of the biblical outbursts, the overall effect producing tastes of Mogwai finding Jesus.

De Trop revel in the creation of tender and innocent songs with a dark underbelly as experience on Broken Love Song For The Duck People where fragile, wistful guitar melodies dominate the fore-front while darker and unsettling cellos have their agonizing screams suppressed. Occasionally the brutality that lurks within this record comes to the surface as it does on Boku where glacial synthesizers that meander harmlessly across the song become drowned out by radio transmission madness as feedback grabs the song and strangles it, crushing any beauty that professed to stake a claim in the song, like Squarepusher spliced with Vangelis.

However, when De Trop attempt poignant they do succeed with the music causing strange images to visualize as with no vocals the mind is free to wander and form associations on its own. For instance Cracked Angels On The Wall has an almost medieval feel with mournful picked guitar notes created a bizarre and whimsical image of a dejected court jester disinterestedly playing to himself in a secluded quarter of his Lords manor to this listener at least.


- by camp counselor steve