To make it quick, if you like Tides, Pelican, The Autumn Project, Russian Circles, The Red Sparowes or any other instrumental, shimmery post rock outfits, just go ahead and grab the debut from Germany’s Long Distance Calling.
An hour of artful, elegant instrumental music on par with the course is what you will get from Satellite Bay, a worthwhile release, but one that doesn’t really stand out from the pack of similar acts. The songs ebb, flow, build and peak with suitable acoustic crescendos and cascading shifts in into heavier moods, but as most instrumental music of this ilk, it’s never as engaging without any form of vocals. Sure, Peter Dolvig of The Haunted adds a spoken work voice over to “Built Without Hands” and there are a few other brief spoken voiceovers for some of the other tracks, add an extra element to a tried and true sound, but its never anything to really define the material of give it something a little more to break it away from the pack.
The seven tracks are all competently written and rendered with the usual build and flow of the genre, specifically opener “Jungfernflug”, stnadout “Aurora”, shifting “Fire In The Mountains” and the slightly heavier “Built Without Hands” which all deliver the genre’s requisite moods and hues in lengthy introspective spades, but never cry out to be listened to again with any urgency, though the next time you have an hour to spare and are in the mood for some laid pack, instrumental mood music, Long Distance Calling do offer another solid option for you to look into,
