Hotel Hotel: "The Captain Goes Down With The Ship (Sinking)"

What happens when two post-rock land-lubbers team up with a salt-sucking barfly and go seek out the Mary Celeste? Somewhere between Texas and Haiti things got lost in low tides and gloom, pounded by relentless dumpers and sent drifting for days beyond either compass or Sat Nav. Luckily, the men on board the stricken schooner found time to record that all important LP of fogginess and float it home before the onset of yellow jack.

Slotting somewhere between the drones of Xela’s Dead Sea (2006) and most anything by the young Greg Haines, “The Captain Goes Down With The Ship (Sinking)” rolls out soundscapes designed to cause mindscrews, plus an extra peripheral element you really don’t want to entertain if you’ve just set foot on your first luxury liner. Violins slide into a cold and watery grave—not quite with the grace of the quartet in Titanic, but all the more authentic for it—conspiring with a frozen Theremin line to ice-nine a vast sea that dooms the listener to shivers. It’s a stoic and ghastly little number, cold as corpses in pack-ice and perfectly suited to anyone who gave up on the sound of a rescue chopper. Just the job if you’re into your brine and bereavement, but to the more casual listeners out there, I’d recommend heading Michael Caine’s remarks from the last few moments of The Prestige: “I once told you about a sailor who drowned. He said it was like going home. I lied—he said it was agony.”