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firetail
Firetail - Little Droner Boy Firetail - Little Droner Boy
MP3 EP 2014 | Silber 174
1 tracks, 16 minutes
$1 download
...reduces a well-known holiday favorite to a resonant blur...
~ Andy Armageddon, Bandjack

Firetail creates a reverb drenched drone from a Christmas classic.

: Press Release
: Digital Booklet
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Track Listing:
Little Droner Boy

Reviews:
Containing a single, sixteen minute track that reduces a well-known holiday favorite to a resonant blur, Firetail’s Little Droner Boy EP is easily the most accessible of the four Silber Records' 2014 Christmas releases that I’ve heard thus far. While the previous two albums in the series (Small Life Form’s Parts for Holiday Projects and Electric Bird Noise’s Birth) would be more or less unlistenable to those raised on more mainstream types of music, Firetail’s Droner Boy (the product of musician Andrea Vascellari, better known for work done under the Lullabier name) doesn’t just have a recognizable theme as its basis, but is -gasp!- actually fairly musical.
Essentially what we have here is a manipulated version of the song “The Little Drummer Boy” that, instead of revolving around a rhythmic percussion parts, centers around an omnipresent, throbbing drone that’s heard throughout the piece in the background. The early minutes of “Little Droner Boy” include snippets of angelic choir singing the main melody as well as the accented lower vocal parts originally intended to simulate the sounds of drum rolls. While none of the words of the song can be heard in Firetail’s version, it is reassuring to at least find some familiar elements to latch onto here (even if the higher voices sound like drawn-out, resonant shrieks), and the basic framework of the original song is present in some form throughout most of the track.
The middle section of “Droner Boy” finds the piece moving as far away from the source material as it ever does, with tinkling chimes, groaning low voice parts, and occasional cadences of military snare drum being heard alongside what sounds like Darth Vader respiration. Ominous though the piece may be at this point, it also has an almost profound, religious sort of feel to it since all the high voice parts have been blended together to create a sort of godly haze which hangs over everything else going on. As it nears its conclusion, things begin to “normalize,” sounding more and more similar to the original tune before a gradual fadeout of almost hopeful reverberating chords. Lacking a big climactic moment of revelation, Little Droner Boy is also probably too drawn out to strike the fancy of those raised on a steady stream of more traditional holiday music. Still, Firetail’s addition to the Silber Christmas release series is entirely listenable and one of the few and perhaps the only volume of the 2014 releases that would have any (albeit limited) appeal to the general listening public. As much as some of the others in this series would be mighty sketchy for most listeners, Little Droner Boy is one that I’d be most inclined to recommend.
~ Andy Armageddon, Bandjack

Italian project FIRETAIL was formed back in 2013, and is the creative vehicle of composer and musician Andrea Vascellari. The EP “Little Droner Boy” dates back to December 2014, and was released through US label Silber Records.
Artists pursuing music of a less than conventional manner is something of a staple for the artists associated with US label Silber Records, and Firetail is no exception in that respect. This is experimental and at times fairly demanding material, in this case with one track clocking in at just over 16 minutes as the sole content of this production. And while the title does indicate that this may be an alternate version of the classic song Little Drummer Boy, I suspect most will have severe problems to establish whether or not that is the actual case here.
This musical journey opens with careful gliding ambient sound textures and layers of voice-like effects combining into a majestic, angelic arrangement, then subtly shifting towards a more instrumental oriented cosmic affair, with darker drones and percussion details replacing the initial voice effects. A hard and firm but distant drum pattern appears just before the halfway stage, initially an almost dominating presence but then lessening increasingly more in stature as loud drones and returning voice effects takes over the dominant spots, developing towards a massive, majestic angelic crescendo, subsequently fading in intensity towards silence in the last minute or so of this excursion. Some machine-like light toned, metallic sounds also adds to the intensity from just after the halfway spot, further increasing the intensity of this atmospheric laden journey. A demanding but also rewarding excursion into landscapes that are cosmic, otherworldly but also rather sacral in mood and mode both.
Those with an interest in creations of an ambient experimental nature might want to give this EP a spin at some point, especially those who tends to be fascinated by soundscapes that incorporate elements that feature both sacral and cosmic elements. A challenging but rewarding creation as far as I’m concerned, and most certainly an unpredictable one.
~ Olav Martin Bjørnsen, House of Prog