Album Review: The Kevin Costner Suicide Pact- Container Ship

Hot on the heels of this summer’s cassette, the Tape Phase EP, Denver experimentalists (with, like, the best band name ever) The Kevin Costner Suicide Pact have returned with a new DOUBLE (!) cassette LP, Container Ship.  And proving that the post-Basinski loop manipulations and noodlings on Tape Phase were, in fact, just a phase, Container Ship goes on to elaborate on a wider vision of this collective.

Adding in elements of more “traditional” post-rock, Container Ship unfolds slowly, like the director’s cut of a film about molasses rolling up a mountain. Opening with the mournful, glimmering “It’ll All Be Over Soon,” the band gives their delay pedals a work out with the hypnotic, lengthy “Wallace,” one of two tracks that features some very restrained, Mogwai-esq time-keeping drumming.

On “New Lopez,” things get a little darker—where the firs three minutes and change are spent bringing in a guitar tone that eventually disappears, and is replaced by like seven minutes of tape hiss, blips, and various ominous sounding tones. With “Mookie Suit,” there’s a balance struck between a weird sense of hope, but an overwhelming cloud of sadness that covers the plaintive guitar strumming—heavily distorted, processed through what sounds like an infinite array of effects pedals.

Container Ship closes out with the 20-minute double shot of “I Don’t Believe Me,” a gorgeous track built around bright flourishes of reversed sound—a sound that eventually grows and builds into something huge; and then the unbelievably mournful drones of “Aerodome,” where sub-bass rattling gives way to dreamy, heavily delayed guitar waves ridden out until the end.

I’m no musician—I tinker with guitars and pedals, with basic drum machine rhythms, and simple synth progressions. The Kevin Costner Suicide Pact are making the kind of music that I can only dream about creating. Container Ships is full of lush, moving, stark landscapes—a perfect record to listen to as we continue to drift into the endless abyss of short days, long nights, and brutal cold.

Container Ship is available today as a limited edition double cassette, via Patient Sounds, or as a digital download from the band.