The Marcia Blaine School For Girls* – Halfway Into The Woods

Not many heard about "The Marcia Blaine School For Girls". This Glasgow trio formed in the already passed decade, didn't create much and wasn't noticeable. Today, they're alive with their music as never before. They have already played with such names as ISAN, Jimmy Edgar, Andreas Tilliander, "Modeselektor", "Funckarma", "Shadow Huntaz" in various events at UK.

Only this year debut album of "The Marcia Blaine School For Girls" called "Halfway Into The Woods" was released in a small infamous label "Highpoint Lowlife". To compare it with earlier works, you can clearly see the maturity of the band, a variety of musical ideas and a wide use of it. Easy waving "The Secret of The Mezzanine" starts the album with calm and mysterious mood. "Boris" remind of American IDM icon Proem. Just like some mechanical jingle orchestra, starts "Rude Mechanicals", that later turns towards the space of broken rhythms and stays there. By the waym "Barbelith" also sounds familiar to the aforementioned just that it seems to get into easy sleep during the end.

It would be a sin not to remember electronic gods "The Future Sound of London" during "Still", when fragments of "We Have Explosive" are heard and the vocal met later charms you so much that you can even think that it's "Underworld". "Quolet" - one of album's best. From the first seconds of this track, you hear a hypnotizing ambient line which lead from the start to the end of a muddy musical space, with cut vocals screaming from time to time through the rhythms coming down the puddles of noise. When they all meet, you find the highest culmination point, there's nothing higher in the album. The trio finishes its debut with "Milk and Honey", a dark, dismal ambient track.

"The Marcia Blaine School For Girls" deserves best ratings with "Halfway Into the Woods". The biggest for of the album is the variety of moods, beautiful melodies and their placing in the release.