Windmills by the Ocean

Instrumental music is something i'm becoming very interested in to hear lately. At first, it took me a while to become accustomed to the lack of vocals, but as I do tend to listen to a fair bit of black metal where the vocals are indecipherable anyway, I questioned myself and why it took me as long as it did to appreciate music without vocals.


So, I came across this American sludge band, Windmills By The Ocean. It stated that they are instrumental and as my interest in both the sludge and instrumental field had been tickled, I decided to give this self-titled full-length a try. When it comes to sludge, I generally don't like the vocals that much. That can take away from the music as they tend to be extreme screams overawe the part that the instruments are playing. Therefore the lack of vocals was perhaps a plus to this self-titled record. It allows the listener to follow closely and without obstruction what is doing what.


Essentially, Windmills By The Ocean are a repetitive band. Looping the same riff over and over again. This could perhaps be seen as rather tedious by some listeners, but I quite enjoyed it. The looping of material allowed me to become familiar with what Windmills By The Ocean were trying to create, an atmospherically pleasing record. Whether they achieve that or not is entirely up to you to decide. In my opinion, they do a competent job without ever really excelling. Which is a shame, Windmills By The Ocean showcase a vast array of talents and potential that could make transform them into a great band, but they're not quite there yet. They have already mastered the capacity to be able to produce some ear pleasing riffs that repeat in order to entice the listeners emotions into the mix.


There are times when I couldn't help but think of the comparison to Devin Townsend's own band, which is rather odd considering the vast difference in genres, but genres were always confusing anyway. To me, there isn't an awful lot of sludge in this. The heavy sounding production is an element of sludge, as well as the low tuning, but it isn't that low and Windmills By The Ocean act as if they're more of a post-rock band than anything. The slightly confusing nature of the music may perhaps detract from what is desired here, but it shouldn't be too much of an issue.


In conclusion, Windmills By The Ocean are a repetitive band that create some catchy riffs that are looped over one another, but simply put, aren't that affective.

I normally avoid alcohol and drugs, but one of my guilty pleasures in life is having some weed with a drummer and bassist friend of mine, and then we'll go to the drummer's granny flat and jam for a few hours. We often try to be a bit eclectic in what we jam, but we normally go back to a few huge doom riffs. We'll get said riff and just loop it for ages, and the more we plug away at it, the deeper the groove becomes. Why am I telling you this? Because this is exactly what Windmills have done, and luckily for us the recording replicates the whole loose jam vibe very well.

The sound is very much droney rock, with the musicians finding a cool riff and then just jamming on it for ages. Imagine, I dunno, Earth jamming with the Foo Fighters and you may have a good idea of where this is at. Some of the songs are basically the dudes jamming away on one riff, like in the excellent third track, which could basically be a pelican riff looped for 6 minutes. The fourth track is an epic nine minute long jam that starts off all synthy, before a dirgey, droney riff comes out. This is probably the closest this album gets to Isis/Red Sparowes/Pelican territory, and it's quite a rewarding song, with the riff looping over and over while other elements slowly creep into the mix, until a totally triumphant riff comes in later and just owns everything. Meanwhile, the final song is a nice li'l slab of stonery drone, big slow waves of guitar with some noodling other the top. It's great stuff.

It's funny, the music here isn't actually all *that* fantastic and/or interesting, but I find myself loving this album anyway. The production is raw and thick and really helps the record, and the album is a fantastic hangover cure and just totally relaxing. Sure it's not life changing, but I just find it incredibly pleasing to listen too. Buy this if you like your stoner-y stuff and don't mind some repetition, otherwise you'll most likely be bored to tears.