Review: Visionary Hours - Footfalls Echo

The track titles allude to the mode of movement of Footfalls Echo. “Neither From Nor Towards”. “The End Precedes The Beginning”. Ideas hover within nests of stillness, unbound by a duty to dim or disperse. Visionary Hours unravels them patiently until the melody separates into four or five strands. The flutes of “Reaches Into Silence” fall away from eachother until the most simple refrain is a cloud of delays, each playfully chasing the tail of the one in front. It’s like a pleasant moment folded over itself; a wedding video rendered in a haze of flowers and folds of billowing white dress, indistinct but beautiful. Instead of venturing forward through time, entering moments where the mood may not be as perfect as it is now, Footfalls Echo coils into little pockets of infinite loop. No one has to be sad ever again.

Visionary Hours lingers on these atmospheres long enough for me to know them intimately, like the bones and palm lines of a lover’s hand. Single melodies repeat so that I can run my fingers over every bump and contour and understand them like I understand myself, the sound modulating gently as we grow more acquainted with eachother. “Music Moves Only In Time” lingers on a naïve, descending refrain that reminds me of childhood and nursery rhymes, albeit wrapped with the haze of slight mismemory. As it persists, clarity starts to emerge like the recollection coming into full focus. Washy synthesiser drops back and shapely woodwind takes its place, vivid and tangible enough for me to inhabit; I’m there again, living the memory with the full immersion of reality itself.