The Echelon Effect ~ Seasons Part 4

First off, a HUGE congratulations to David Walters, who announced his four-part Seasons project in April of 2011, and completed his triptych on the last day of December.  Late 2011 also saw the release of Walters’ first physical CD, Mosaic, on Oxide Tones.  An excellent year for the artist, and we wish him a well-deserved rest in 2012.  Walter’s work as The Echelon Effect is always ebullient, a bell-inflected strand of post-rock that brings to mind Sigur Rós and the usual suspects.  It’s been a joy to hear these installments as they’ve arrived, storing them up in the MacBook in hopes of burning them to a single disc.  As it turns out, the entire project tops 80 minutes and requires two.  But the final installment stands well on its own.  “With a warmth inside, I walk into the dark” is a single, 23-minute piece: a welcome change for the artist, and brave.  Thankfully, it pays huge dividends.  Keyboards, drums and the aforementioned bells drop in and out of the mix, providing moments of soothing, rolling beauty.  At the eight 1/2 minute mark, Walters begins to play with effects in DJ fashion, in effect providing his own remix.  At ten, he flirts with the ambient classical field.  Wind effects dance like whirling snow; this is, after all, the winter entry.  A brief voiceover at the sixteen-minute mark leads the drums back from the outer wilderness, after which the track walks a gently rising slope to the end.  Think of it as a sturdy toboggan taken out of the garage after the shoveling has ended: a wonderful coda to one year and a gateway to the next.  (Richard Allen)

Available here