5 out of 5

Label: VHF

Producer: Richard Youngs / Simon Wickham-Smith

This gang has worked together before, but the pitch here was to meet once a year and collaborate on only one track, hence our 5 songs being titled after 5 different years – 2002 through 2006.  Now, anyone’s tolerance for the majority of VHF output is going to be based on their appreciation for improvisational or psychedelic work, leaning toward folk or noise depending on the artist.  But this particular work is a nice middleground for several reasons – because it’s not developed with the duo working, strictly, in tandem on an album, you get a flavor of both artist’s styles in each track, combining some folk elements (Youngs) with noise / electronic elements (Wickham-Smith).  And the meet-for-one-track pitch also means that each piece is complete, so if you can’t tolerate the “What track is this?” vibe of a lot of the noisier stuff, like Matt Bower’s whole ring of groups, 5 Years also provides a counter for that.  But this doesn’t net 5 stars just for being a good compromise – these are incredibly listenable and deep compositions, enriched by each artist’s confidence in their own style and awareness of how to work with one another.  I’d say the lean is more on Wickham-Smith’s repetitive electronic loops than Young’s softer touch, but there’s a lullaby element to each track that makes it a pretty touching listen, something that works beyond background music.  I still can’t say how it’s best to wean someone on to VHF unless they’re already interested in the scene, but there are enough abstracted moments on 5 Years to catch a random listener’s ear and yet still be appreciated by people in love with this corner of the music world.