English shoegazers Daniel Land & The Modern Painters, formed in Manchester, debuted with the EPs
Voss (2007), containing
the poppy Locust,
the
turbulent oneiric instrumental Within The Boundaries,
the first version of The Magic In My Head and especially the
catatonic and lugubrious eight-minute Lostening,
and
Imagining October (2008), containing
the eight-minute chasm of dejection Look At September Look At October.
The album
Love Songs for the Chemical Generation (2009)
contains
gentle lullabies such as Benjamin's Room and
an improved seven-minute version of The Magic in My Head
that blend the Byrds' jangling folk-rock, Brian Eno's ambient music and Loop's psychedelic trance (with an
Enya-esque refrain in the latter),
next to slocore elegies a` la Codeine such as the appropriately titled floating abstract tapestry of Codeine.
The eight-minute Run Silent Run Deep is a translucent version of these combined styles, whereas
the folkish eight-minute Off Your Face Again fuses
Donovan and
John Fahey
The tidal electronic crescendo of Lighting Out for the Territories
is contrasted by dreamy wavering rhapsodies such as Glitterball.
The album reprises Locust (besides Within the Boundaries),
flirts with country music in Good Speed Good Fun,
and takes a detour in the more lively, electronic and romantic Love Lies Bleeding.
Daniel Land briefly joined Mark Peters' Engineers for their second album Three Fact Fader (2009), singing and playing bass.
Land then started the piano-based ambient project Riverrun with
Pentimento (2010), which contains the 17-minute Hamworthy Common,
and the sprawling double-disc La Mer (2011), containing the 35-minute Dancing Ledge.
The Painters still released The Space Between Us (2012), on which they
expanded the instrumentation to harpsichords, accordions and mandolins.
The band seems to aim for a poppier sound, notably in The Silver Medal,
Sleeping With The Past and in
the seven-minute The Hawk & The Nightingale,
but with mixed results.
The languid and melancholy Echo & Narcissus,
the whispered delicate trance of Cherry Bark & Almonds
and the fragile 13-minute psychedelic country-rock jam Starfish Fucking fare better but still can't repeat the magic of the first album.
Land launched his solo career with
My Sad Captains (Saint Cecilia, 2012),
followed by King Midas In Reverse (2013), a collaboration with the Bing Satellites, aka prolific electronic new-age musician Brin Coleman.
Land's subsequent solo albums were:
A Single Man (Saint Cecilia, 2013),
In Love With A Ghost (Hinney Beast, 2016) ,
The Dream Of The Red Sails (Hinney Beast, 2019),
the six-song mini-album A Certain Kind Of Light (Hinney Beast, 2019), which is perhaps the best of his late career,
and
Out Of Season (Hinney Beast, 2023).
Meanwhile, Riverrun returned with
New Cartographies (2013), containing the ten-minute Wulf-Monath,
Romer Shoal (2016), containing the 26-minute Dubos Point,
Lilliput (2018), containing only the 58-minute title-track,
The Same Silent Hill (2020), containing the 15-minute The Same Silent Hill,
and
Avalon Marsh (2021), split between
Avalon Marsh (27:41) and
Swill Point (27:39).
Land also started the project Arber with Arber (2019) and Odes (2023).
