Long Distance, Jefferson Pilot's newest EP-length release, eases in with the melodica-soaked "Imperial Pint," and the mood it creates is sustained throughout the album's four pieces. The mood is ethereal and evocative, with a haziness and sense of brooding mystery that is enhanced by half-hidden voices and other more unidentifiable sounds. It's not creepy in the Halloween sense; it's more of a layering of insinuations of the unknown just lurking beyond the edge of realization. "Night Game" continues this experiment with strange percussive sounds and Robert Wyatt-esque vocalizing, further enhanced by the keyboard drone until a separate, more "musical" theme appears and then slowly dissipates in a layered, painterly fashion into a beautiful reverie before morphing into a percussive electronic soundscape. "Warehouse Dream" is a layered concoction of bells, chimes, and music-box keyboard sounds eventually overlaid by a fragmented vocal melody again insinuating more than meets the ear. "Point of Rocks" begins with a hint of "Close to the Edge"-intro style nature sounds as the piece continues to give a sense of almost-realized presences from other worlds, emphasized by the almost-angelic, chopped up vocalizing and by the disembodied questions posed as the piece unfolds and comes to a haunting end.
Long Distance has quickly become among my top favorites of Jefferson Pilot's work, largely because of its suite-like quality and its sustained mood. He has constructed a lovely soundscape of quietly epic proportions-- definitely one for the headphones.
(Full disclosure: Jefferson Pilot's my brother.)
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