Released September 30, 2008 on Blocks Recording Company.
Orchestral music has always been a closet favorite of mine. It is something that I slowly let out of the bag to people I know, mostly you don't impress people by saying that you enjoy orchestral music or contemporary classical music; instead they usually think that you are a pretencious bastard. I have enjoyed Godspeed You! Black Emperor since I was introduced to them by an article about Thursday in which Geoff Rickley name checked them, and I have an extensive classical music vinyl collection. I was not familiar with or expectant of liking Final Fantasy's Spectrum, 14th Century, mostly because a very popular musical site loves them and usually anything they love I hate. However I thought I would give it a try considering they have a new album out (last month's "Heartland").
So, what did I find in the almost eighteen minutes: beauty. This is absolutely gorgeous. It makes Andrew Bird look uneducated and ugly. Essentially Final Fantasy is just one man, Owen Pallett, with a loop station and violin, and some help from a multi instrumentalist. The music, though brisk, is wandering and beautiful. It would fit great into a play or a dense movie, someone already had that idea, he along with Arcade Fire's Win Butler created the soundtrack to Richard Kelly's "The Box". Like Her Space Holiday, the music is all the more impressive when you realize that he created it all by himself. "Spectrum, 14th Century" is beautiful and a fully realized EP with not fat, it is a beautiful artistic statement with replay value, and in this throwaway society that is something special in and of itself. However, this is not a type of music that I would like to see preformed live, it, like Andrew Bird, depends on perfection of the artist and the instrument and sometimes live performances do not lend perfection to the artist.
Rating - 5 out of 5
Favorite Track - "The Butcher"
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