Austin Sound

Stories occasionally surface of actors who, attempting to capture the essence of a role, are incapable of letting go of their new persona— unable to immediately “switch off,” they retain the language and mannerisms of some past character even after the final cut. Austin’s Ghost of the Russian Empire, with their first full length, “The Mammoth,” encounter a similar pitfall—after establishing their own spectral, mournful shoegaze sound, the band refuses to move on or cover new ground.

Starting with the entrancing “Decade Without a Death,” GOTRE wears their influences on the sleeves of their greatcoats, opening with what sounds like the intro to a Godspeed, You! Black Emperor album before the tempo picks up, unfolding into a fast paced, haunting affair. Each snare hit drives the band forward as delayed rhythm guitar meets ultra-reverbed vocals, making the band seem ten feet underwater, a sound that continues for the remainder of the album.

“Ambient” is one of those genres that’s context- dependent for its meaning. Depending on the mouth in which the word is born, “ambient” can mean anything from an invitation to stoner transcendence to do-nothing music—often, as in this case, not even vocals!—for do-nothing people that does hardly any good for hardly anyone. While the latter charge, in my opinion, hardly sticks, if my experience is any guide I think we can all agree that this EP is great for getting stoned and getting into strange stoner conversations with strangers. In strange places.

Forgive that self-indulgent story, but this is self-indulgent music, lush and operatic in the extreme. The first two and the last of the seven tracks are My Education originals; the middle four are remixes by other bands of previously released songs by My Education. Track one, “Spirit of Peace (a variation a theme by Popul Vuh, begins with a single piano playing single notes, an effect that from these virtuosos some might describe as haunting but that I think of more as elegaic, becoming eventually more beautiful than sad. It is joined soon enough by symphonic strings in perfect harmony. It’s not that this start is misleading, for much of Moody Dipper is just downright pretty, but part of what makes this EP so compelling is its management of consonance with dissonance, often simultaneously, as on the dueling snare/hi-hat and synthesizer solos that dominate track three, eight minutes and twenty-five seconds of “Dalek: Green Arrow: Dead Verse Remix.”