Scott Walker Drift CD

Personnel: Scott Walker; James Stevenson (guitar); Peter Walsh (sitar); Deborah Widdup, Karin Leishman, Simon Masterton Smith, Clive Dobbins, Matthew Scrivener, Alison Kelly, Benjamin Buckton, Paul Willey, Janice Graham, Julian Tear, Charles Sewart, Ofer Falk, Sophie Barber, Clare Hoffman, Celia Sheen, Michael Davis , Steve Morris, Thomas Bowes, Robert Salter, Amanda Smith (violin); Philip Sheppard (cello, electric cello); Andrew Fuller, Judith Herbert, John Tunnell, Tamsy Kaner, Robert Max, Jane Fenton, Nick Roberts, Joely Koos, Jonathan Williams (cello); Andrew Cronshaw (bamboo flute, concertina, shawm); Mark Warman (ocarina, keyboards, percussion); Pete Long (baritone saxophone); Derek Watkins (flugelhorn); Rohan Onraet (percussion); Hugh Burns (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, baritone guitar); Brian Gascoigne (keyboards); Alasdair Malloy (drums, percussion); Ian Thomas (drums); Steve Pearce, Vanessa Quinones.
Audio Mixer: Peter Walsh .
Recording information: AIR Studios; Metropolis Studio, London, England.
Photographer: Marco Atkins.
Unknown Contributor Role: James Stevenson .
An utterly unique accomplishment, Scott Walker's THE DRIFT is the enigmatic British-based singer-songwriter's first official album since 1995's challenging TILT. Those looking for the Brechtian drama and crooner stylings of Walker's lauded late-'60s work will happily find them on these 10 haunting tracks, albeit in altered forms that often bypass melody to create what sometimes recalls a chilling sonic abstraction of Edgar Allan Poe's writings.
While two extended tracks, "Clara" and "Cue," wander down some frightening paths (occasionally calling to mind Kronos Quartet's BLACK ANGELS), and make up a considerable amount of THE DRIFT, the record also includes slightly less daunting pieces such as "Cossacks Are," which builds to propulsive rhythmic passages, and "Jesse," a brooding song seemingly rising up from some forsaken underground chamber. Far from accessible, yet mesmerizing in its bleak minimalist vision, THE DRIFT once again reinforces Walker's reputation as a fascinating and thoroughly unconventional artist.
There were intermittent soundtrack and score contributions of varying magnitudes, as well as a couple other low-key projects, but The Drift is Scott Walker's proper follow-up to 1995's Tilt, an album that also happened to trail its predecessor by 11 years. If 1984's Climate of Hunter put the MOR in morose, Tilt avoided the road completely and went straight toward the fractured, fraught images inside Walker's nightmares. It was entirely removed from anything that could've been classified as contemporary. The Drift isn't an equally severe leap from Tilt, but it is darker, less arranged, alternately more and less dense, and ultimately more frightening. Maybe it'll make your body temperature drop a few degrees. Working with what Walker has referred to as "blocks of sound," only a few of the album's 68 minutes have any connection to rock music, and many of those minutes are part of a harrowing 9/11 song that also obliquely references "Jailhouse Rock" as Elvis Presley cries out ("I'm the only one left alive!") to his stillborn twin brother. The songs swing from hovering drones to crushing jolts. The blocks that make them, then, differ tremendously in weight, from one that could be pushed by an index finger to one that could only be hauled by a forklift. Whenever a vast shaft of space opens up, it is eventually stuffed with drastic, horrific dissonance. While a song might contain a constant element or two, they're all in a constant state of unease and flux. Walker's voice matches the activity levels of the sounds, providing a kind of paranoid croon one minute and then, during another, casting almost demonic projections that are nearly as rattling as the accompaniment. From the outset, the album seems impossibly insular and impenetrable, especially if you've been led to believe that Scott Walker's name is synonymous with reclSpin (p.90) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "THE DRIFT is an intimidating slab of off-kilter guitar wheedles, weird percussion, thudding synths, and that voice: soaring, roaring..."
Alternative Press (p.210) - "With THE DRIFT, Walker has gone as far into the atmosphere as one can travel while still being earthbound."
The Wire (p.50) - "THE DRIFT has real, corporeal impact....The ten songs on THE DRIFT document states of personal and political uncertainty..."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.102) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he spectre of his old aesthetic preoccupations -- modernist literature, nouvelle vague cinema, existential angst -- is evident throughout."