Had Steve Reich been asked to score Lawrence of Arabia instead of Maurice Jarre, it might have sounded something like Bell Orchestre’s As Seen Through Windows. The latest release from the Arcade Fire side-project is a curiosity cabinet full of cinematic pastiche afloat an ocean of nostalgic grandeur, encapsulated in a sea-worn bottle, united only by the vague promise of land.
As Seen Through Windows begins inauspiciously at the heels of its predecessor, Recording A Tape In The Colour of the Light, amidst an engendered backdrop of horns and woodwinds before putting on a more worldly weight with the introduction of an oud on the track "Elephants." It's a kind of imperial safari through the sepia jungles of an era surmounted by industry. Next are the despairingly cold "Icicles/Bicycles" and the impossibly old "Water/Light/Shifts," muted by distance and longing before a cacophonous clusterfuck in "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" and the synth-driven title track "As Seen Through Windows." Both the pace and sensibility of the album pick up in "The Gaze" before a near standstill at the onset of "Dark Lights." The album closes with the characteristically epic "Air Lines/Land Lines," a melancholic medley of repackaged obsolescence made new by its seamless appropriation.
The album is post-rock at its best, a monumentous achievement even by the group’s standards. Knowingly eclectic and shamelessly introspective, As Seen Through Windows recalls an era lost to simplicity but with a weary sensibility all its own, as though it were looking in on itself through the worn glass of a sea-bound bottle.
1. Stripes
2. Elephants
3. Icicles/Bicycles
4. Water/Light/Shifts
5. Bucephalus Bouncing Ball
6. As Seen Through Windows
7. The Gaze
8. Dark Lights
9. Air Lines/Land Lines
More about: Bell Orchestre
