Following in the wake of the oceanic surreal fantasy LP High Hawaiian Fog, Coppice Halifax has returned with an encore, of sorts, to HHF: Pacific Opal Hex. Taking its name from the vinyl-only track on High Hawaiian Fog, this album continues where HHF's closing piece "Amstar Paradise" leaves off. Starting with sparse washes of low-tide textures, glittering white noise and pillowy chords that swell and subside like silvery waves wiping the shore. Delay trails begin to accumulate and the textures become more humidified, covered in glistening tropical precipitation. A fullness of harmony emerges, and just when it feels as if the crescendo has finally hit its apex, a slow, warm bassline enters like a sun-bleached cruise liner sailing across a tranquil purple horizon line. A pulsing, erotic rhythm subtly forms and suddenly that far-off woodblock sound you thought was a rope tapping on a mast turns into a simple, stately beat. Five minutes turn into ten, and ten to twenty, as this endless orgasmic cloud continues to surf along in slo-mo on a psychedelic plateau of blue water and breeze. If seawater, nostalgia and endorphins could be distilled into a drug, it would bear the name Pacific Opal Hex, and be served in a snifter with a balloon of nitrous oxide on the side.
credits
released October 7, 2011
Written and produced by Brian Grainger. Mastered by the Analog Botanist.