When I last reviewed a Landing record I accused them of recording too quickly. Counting their collaboration with Yume Bitsu's Adam Forkner as Surface of Eceon, Landing's Seasons was their third record in a year. Seasons found Landing experimenting with conventional song structures with some success, but the songs didn't seem quite as developed as they could have been had more time and effort put into their arranging and recording. And now, a few short months later, they've released Fade In Fade Out, a record that lasts longer than most Beatles albums (37 minutes), but which we in the digital age would call an EP.
Despite the torrential pace of their release schedule, it appears as though Landing still has the touch. Fade In Fade Out is actually a return to my preferred Landing mode, that of a primarily instrumental, FX-heavy guitar band. Where the shoegazy Oceanless bled psychedelic color and frequently drifted into jamming, and Seasons found Landing trying their hand with traditional songs, Fade In Fade Out is a shift toward deeply textured drone. There's barely a drum or cymbal on this thing; most tracks are nothing more than a rich swirl of guitar and keyboard harmonics. Seasons brought Landing comparisons with slowcore bands, but Fade In Fade Out warrants a mention with Windy & Carl or Stars of the Lid.
Where vocals appear, they're spare and, as they say, just another instrument. "Against the Rain" has the most prominent lyrics, but it's nothing that could be considered a "song" in the Cole Porter sense. A thudding kick drum is used for color, but most of the sound comes from a web of intertwined guitar lines with their delay pedals set on "infinity", as hints of synth drone shine through the gaps. Some crooned lines about rain rise and fall over the course of a minute or two, leading me to believe that this is a Seasons outtake. "Whirlwind" is closer to the sound of Oceanless, with ride-cymbal-heavy drumming and distant, buried dream-pop vocals by Adrienne Snow (a woman's voice is natural to this kind of sound, and I much prefer hers to husband Aaron's).
My favorite piece is the 12-minute closing track "Pulse", a slowburn number that takes plenty of time getting off the ground but covers virtually every kind of guitar tone possible before it's done. The squeezably-soft Windy & Carl feedback is here, and so are the ringing chords, the tremeloed leads, and the harsher drones. There's no acoustic picking (Landing cover that adequately on the fine "Constellations"), but "Pulse" establishes Landing as extremely skilled in the emotional application of guitar tone.
