Agalloch

Four years ago, Agalloch released the limited edition Grey EP to coincide with their monumental tour alongside the Gathering and Novembers Doom. Another leap year later, the band have offered up the EP they identify as its stylistic counterpart. More instrumental and acoustic than their standard album work, Agalloch’s The White EP is 30 minutes of intoxicating subtlety. In contrast to the two long, revisioned tracks of The Grey EP, The White features seven relatively short songs completed between 2004 and 2007. Acoustic guitar provides the record’s dominant timbre and dark folk style, but The White EP exceeds simple categorisation. Unconventional horns, field samples, synths, piano and voices enrich the EP’s texture and channel, at various times, rock, post-rock, ambient and even classical influences. Though The White, as its name suggests, is much "lighter” than Agalloch’s metal recordings, much of the EP hints at the darkness and aggression the band are capable of and, like their albums, is wonderfully and hypnotically complex.