The Stars of Aviation - Snow On Snow - CD (2003)

Labels: Kitchen
Review by: Andy Malcolm

I think these dudes sent me something for review ‘back in the day’. The name seems familiar anyway. I have to say I really like the design for the cd, it’s done in sepia tone with a picture of an old aeroplane and a bunch of dudes standing around it. Really nice! I also had a giggle that one of the song titles is “Stars of Aviation are singing about the summer, but is it going to be sunny, Carol?”

There are 4 songs, and early on this is a really blissed out, chilled indie sound with maybe a bit of country in there too. Everything is slow and drawn out, with softly sung vocals gently creeping over the top, picking up into occasional moments of energy. It’s rather Low-ish, if the truth be told, especially when it builds to the walls of sound such as on “Snow on Snow”. They even have female vocals in the background by the sounds of it. Very warm, pretty music. Recorded in a library even, heh, awesome. Following that is “Illumined”, which is nice and (relatively!) upbeat indie number. Again, it is of a fairly plodding pace and has some serene moments but it is nicely melodic and has “la la la” bits. Somehow during the course of this review I have lost the CD case, so I don’t know what track 3 is called. D’oh. The band have settled into a flow by now, with another quiet one, nice boy+girl harmonies and a repetetive keyboard part in the background, which turns into something more substantial later. It’s all very pleasant, though this one is more twee than the first two tracks. We wind up on another twee-ish track, and I still haven’t found the box. Grr. Again there is keyboard, and it is the most upbeat of the 4 songs on here.

I did prefer the first 2 more quiet efforts, but I enjoyed all of it anyway. It is easily summed up using the exact same adjective that I reckon I used last time I reviewed these folks: nice. Yay! Plus I really like their name. And they thank the weather department at BBC Look East, eh?

PS – I FOUND THE CASE, I FOUND THE CASE!