Heathen Harvest
cd reviews • April 2008
Sage
Launch and Landing
HeathenHarvest.com

Artist: The Lost Patrol (United States)
Title: Launch And Landing
Label: Self Released
Genre: Shoegaze

01 Sirens
02 Only Love
03 AWOL
04 Take me Away
05 The Whim and the Will
06 Orbit
07 The Night and you
08 Godspeed
09 Speak to me
10 Venus Burlesque
11 Rogue Heart
12 Tears of the Sun

   The Lost Patrol is a four-piece, female-fronted trip hop act out of New York in the United States. It is unsure as to when they started their careers in the music business but the earliest known release to us is 1999's self-titled effort. Compilations and samplers aside, The Lost Patrol has gained a large following not just from their unique sound and style, but the fact that they have managed to avoid the grasps of the record industry and remain largely independent all of these years. With nearly a decade now under their belts, The Lost Patrol is seemingly steamrolling through the shoegaze underground and making a statement for themselves. Granted the music is perhaps a little to cheery sounding to become an underground classic like Lycia or La Floa Maldita, they are really working to reinvent the sound completely for a new perspective on the shoegaze genre.

   Launch and Landing's atmosphere is largely of a trip-happy, spacey and surfy atmosphere. If you allow yourself to chill out, relax, and kick back to the guitar ambiance that drives the music, you can almost feel yourself riding the waves with psychedelic colors galore. Such a strange mixture, as when one thinks of shoegaze they generally hear one of two things: dark, cold, and depressive atmospheres, or college-rock/post-rock styled atmospheres. This is neither, as this would most likely be the beach boys with a female singer and a vast array of effects pedals.

   Okay, so perhaps its not THAT cheery. But it definitely provokes happy thoughts and a chilled atmosphere. But there's one thing that can be said for sure: This band is destined for great things in the future. Perhaps 'Launch and Landing” then is quite the appropriate title for the release. Though they've put together a rather impressive discography already, this seems like a 'starting point' kind of album rather than one to fit the middle of someone's career. Portishead will be making a comeback soon, so people will be looking for new spacey styles of music, and look for The Lost Patrol to be one of the bands that the larger part of the rock audience picks up. Fantastic record.

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