It's hard to know where to start with Flameout, one of seemingly dozens of albums by the prolific composer and producer Daniel Crommie, so I think I'll go with the literal first thing that struck me about it, and that's the cover art. I love it. It features some kind of mechanical being simultaneously playing a flute and a stringed instrument. This guy might have tape reels for eyes, but they don't seem to be an invention. What I mean is that they give off the impression of being some kind of woodland creature, not created by man but created by the Earth. Perhaps someone left a tape deck in the Amazon 50 years ago and this being is what became of it, I'm not sure, but I love it, and I think it's perfect for the music that accompanies it.
First of all, and most obviously, there's a lot of flute on this album. I love flutes, and Crommie can not only play the flute very well, but they also understand how to place it within a composition and within a mix. Take Pale Driver, for instance. A ten minute long industrial chug of synths and drum machines that sounds simultaneously optimistic and menacing, but atop of all this machinery are flutes that flutter and titter like birds escaping the industrialisation of the world below.
This feeling of a conflict between nature and industry permeates throughout the entire album. Sometimes they work in harmony, but often they feel completely at odds with each other. There's this thing that happens a few times across the album, where the ethereal music will be interrupted by a loud, heavily processed guitar. The guitar sounds the same every time, to the point that it feels like a distinct character. It always feels like an unwelcome intrusion, like a bulldozer plowing through the rainforest. It's the kind of thing that just leaves me in awe and with a sense of creative envy and hope that I could do something half as inspired once I've been in the game for as long as Daniel has.
Typically I would like to pick out a few stand out tracks when writing a review, but this time I'm not sure how I would do that. These compositions are singular compositions in their own right, but really this wonderful album demands to be listened to as a singular experience, and so I would like to discourage any cherry picking on the disobedient reader's part.
