Reviews for [RL86]
The National Park Service "Winter Clothes"

• Guide Me Little Tape
  Organic drift from The National Park Service with Winter Clothes on Rok Lok records. Something that sounds like primarily guitar, heavily treated and reassembled, with possibly a synth going on pretty liberally. (Although I'm often surprised by just how many artists you think use synth are constructing everything from guitar) Anyway, my own listening limitations aside, this is really beautiful stuff. It's ambience tinged with a bit of folk and shoegaze, hovering around the periphery of drone long enough to give each element in the mix time to develop. Soft buoyant notes, played tactfully and with restraint. A strong editors eye is on display, as a carefully curated group of sounds is introduced in each track, but between tracks a wide variety. It's a clever way to play with a large number of elements and textures without overwhelming the integrity of the sounds themselves. Mature and thoughtful. Hand numbered edition of 50 home dubbed and hand stamped tapes. Grab direct from Rok Lok.
  
  
  
  
• Lost In a Sea of Sound
  Intricate sounds dotted over infinite stretches of time. Like a density map representing melodies across a continent, the populated ares are thick with stippling of the paper. The National Park Service is a road trip in sound vistas across lands existing without chronological roots. The tone takes on vintage edges and crumbles through a ambient blaze of delightful hue. Winter Clothes is the title of this forty five minute cassette. The seven tracks are all lengthy forays revealing sweet melodies that grow then dissolve within their spaces of time. Always amber, never bright or dark, like the sun on the high clouds in the dawn or dusk. The color created has been refracted through the atmosphere and can never be duplicated. This is the project of Bill Delaney who is The National Park Service. His venerable approach reminds me a little of Leyland Kirby, but more with field recordings in nature rather than vintage sounds of man. Winter Clothes is always in some state of tones melting then puddling below, and with enough mass, the process continues on indefinitely. Bill Delaney has composed very dense sound textures deserving many listens to truly absorb. This is the first release for The National Park Service on Rok Lok Records. Winter Clothes is a few years old, but out of an edition of fifty, there are a small amount available for purchase.