The first of four
Roy Montgomery
LPs planned for release in 2021,
Island of Lost Souls
is a return to purely instrumental compositions after 2018's excellent
Suffuse
, which incorporated guest vocals by
Grouper
and
Julianna Barwick
, among others. All four pieces on
Island
are dedicated to influential musicians and artists who have passed, and while they all carry a mournful tone to some degree, they all express sincere gratitude and seem to praise more than lament. Opener "Cowboy Mouth," dedicated to playwright, actor, and director
Sam Shepard
, builds up mist-clouds of shimmering, reverb-soaked guitars and melodies that could easily be mistaken for synthesizers, all flowing together in a sort of purifying wash. The other tracks sound more cyclical and loop-heavy. "Unhalfmuted," for
Tuxedomoon
's
Peter Principle
, is the strangest cut here, filled with mind-bending shoegaze-like textures but without the punishing volume common to the genre. "Soundcheck" (in tribute to
Adrian Borland
, of
the Sound
Second Layer
) is maybe the most richly melodic piece, and the most melancholy, but even its grief seems to pour down like cascades of light. A similar idea is explored on the album's 22-minute conclusion, "The Electric Children of Hildegard von Bingen (For Florian Fricke)," a slow-moving minimalist piece that gradually reveals layers of intricate details underneath the insistent, ethereal strumming. Comforting rather than funereal, the album is much more a celebration of life than an outpouring of grievances. ~ Paul Simpson