This is a record had me reaching for my Thesaurus to look up synonyms for the word 'shimmering'.
I found 'glimmery'; 'glistening' and 'glowing' which would also fit as alternative words to describe the luminous effect of the album's drone based ambience.
Anyone who reveres the music of artists such as Grouper, Stars of the Lid and Ólafur Arnalds will know the everywhere and nowhere place these sounds come from.
A Dancing Beggar is the solo project of UK based James Simmons who uses homemade samples, wordless vocals and treated guitar or piano but who allows none of these sounds to dominate.
The record was mixed and mastered at the Sound Dept. London by Ludovic Morin whose track record includes work with artists like Beirut, Fleet Foxes and Sigur Ròs.
The album title suggests an affirmative 'feel the fear but do it anyway' message perhaps mindful of the fact that,all too often, these kinds of meandering instrumentals are unjustly dismissed as melancholic downers. The title of one of the tracks - There Is Hope Here - supports this theory.
Simmons' previous releases, an EP How They Grow and an LP What We Left Behind, featured more traditional guitar or piano based pieces. The 'Follow the Dark' album takes a more ambitious course in that it contains longer, more abstract tunes.
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There is no obvious unifying theme. The front and back covers respectively present photographs of an anonymous country scene and a stretch of stony beach. Both locations could be anywhere and they are the type of snapshots most would be tempted to discard as containing nothing of interest. You could perhaps read into this that beauty is always a relative concept and that the significance of places is equally personal.
We are told that the track Empty Boats is dedicated to sailors who have lost their lives at sea and that Returning was inspired by an experience of driving home during a storm but this information hardly seems crucial to the enjoyment of the music.
Instead, the calm, abstract drift of the seven tracks takes you on a sonic journey where the destination seems a secondary consideration.
The result is frequently magical and constantly shimmering.
A Dancing Beggar's Blog
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