Windmills by the Ocean

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.