Album Review: Wild Dogs in Winter - Homba

'Homba' is the debut effort from Wild Dogs in Winter, recorded in their home studio, their follow up to the self released self-titled EP, since releasing their first ep, which was all over the place genre wise. Wild Dogs in Winter have settled on their own brand of post rock ambience which is defined in Homba.

The ethereal opening to the opening track, 'Coal in the Blood' presents to us 'Wild Dogs in Winters' unorthodox combination of ambient and post-rock. Despite the fact it takes about 4 minutes for the track to pick up the pace, the opening is quite effective but the big chords feel incredibly arguous. 'Lung Wine' also starts out extremely soft before crescendoing into a mess of drums and synths.

'E Hu Li' brings in a clarinet as well as a piano, this is perhaps the weirdest and the shortest track on the album. Rhys Bakers's muffled voices sing in the background 'i'll be your backwards boy you cannot face from for any side by yours'.The minimal percussion in 'Homba' as well as the sparse guitars conjures up a collosal atmosphere which remains stationary, there was aso much potential for this track to be a huge wall of guitars, after 3 minutes, it gets pretty boring.

The begining of the end to the album 'The Butcher' could have easily have sat alongside 'Bottom Feeder' and 'Sol Solis' from Moving Mountains' 'Pneuma'. The song segues into 'The Butcher's wife' which progresses from a sparse guitar with harmonised vocals into a much louder sound that I have been waiting on for all of this album.

Tieing in with the name of the band, 'Homba' is perhaps the perfect winter album. The consistent atmosphere that this band manages to create throughout the entire album is incredible alongside weird arrangements and a small range of dynamics, however, the only drawback is the lack of variation, most of the songs do infact sound the same and there is a lack of difference in them. This album sounds like Mogwai without the beef.

3/5

'Homba' by Wild Dogs In Winter is available now on Gravid Hands.

Wild Dogs In Winter on MySpace

George Gadd