By Deuce

One would imagine, judging by the way the album sounds, that Danny Peck had all the time in the world to put together his Long Player, Where Hope Goes, Fear Follows. The man cranked out over an hour’s worth of music with just 10 tracks, only one of which, “In the Pine Trees”, is less than five minutes.

Most of the tunes are closer to the six-minute marker. Some exceed it. There’s even a number entitled “Time is not real”. And, by coincidence or not, it just so happens to clock in at almost 11 minutes.

It’s not just the length of the cuts though, that give this album its temporal characteristics. It’s the way the artist takes his time on the actual songs themselves. Many have elaborate, sprawling arrangements. The first couple of tracks, including “To Rise and Fall” and “We can live underground forever”, start off with the slowest, and highest-pitched, of strings. It’s as though Peck were meandering along, playing chords with string harmonies, until he got something that felt right.

To describe most of the numbers as ballads would be far from inappropriate. Many of them have protracted chords, with long notes and plenty of space in between them. They move slowly, as though Peck were perhaps improvising or, what seems to be the motif with this pastiche of songs, simply taking his time.

He’s joined by a female vocalist on “Not Real”. Unsurprisingly, she comes in singing in just as high-pitched, and slow, a tone as most of the music on this LP is. There’s a decidedly melancholy air on this track, which exudes throughout the chord progression of ponderous synths, and even the explosions of sounds that emanate during its more poignant moments.

“Controlled Flight” is another slow-paced, well thought out number in which the artist toys around with chords on some form of electric bass tightly coupled with a guitar sounding instrument that could very well be a keyboard sound. Plus, there’s these eldritch, heavily distorted kicks scattering about the tune, and that same sense of ‘where seldom is heard, a discouraging word’ slowness to the tune’s pace.

Zoning out to this album would only be natural. Peck, evidently, was deep in the zone when he laid it down.