Ninja Tune
2009
The Long Lost Album
About This Album
Alfred and Laura Darlington are husband and wife singer/songwriters and The Long Lost is their first collaboration. They both sing, play instruments, and share production duties their self-titled debut for Ninja Tune. It's not the usual Ninja Tune fare, definitely more suited for long rambles through the English countryside than to a night spent digging through crates or nodding along to heavy beats. Sure, there are electronics underpinning a majority of the songs here, but they are understated and subtle, definitely playing a support to the variety of acoustic instruments (oboe, flute, clarinet, toy piano, acoustic guitar) the duo implement to create the gentle collision of outsider folk music and bedroom electronica. There are no rough edges to the sound, no clattering beats, and very few moments of musical mayhem to distract from the calm and peaceful (with a slight creepy undertone you almost always find accompanying this kind of folk music) spell the blend of instruments and voices creates. The reason there may be a trace of surprise in that statement comes from the fact that Alfred Darlington's day job is making supremely weird and inventive electronic pop as Daedelus. He does a good job of not letting too much of his near-trademarked approach creep into the Long Lost's sound.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,6 and 12)

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