Album Review: And So I Watch You From Afar - 'Jettison'

Fifteen-plus years and five studio albums into their career, north Antrim instrumentalists And So I Watch You From Afar (ASIWYFA) have pushed the boundaries yet again with their sixth release.

ASIWYFA drummer Chris Wee previously described the band in five words: “complex, noisy, frantic, ethereal and jubilant.” These elements haven’t always been collectively evident on their records. With Jettison, however, they seem to have melded all of these attributes, and more, across nine tracks and forty seamless minutes of music. 

The album, conceptualised by ASIWYFA guitarist Rory Friers, is a collaboration with the Liverpool visual artist Sam Wiehl. The band – Niall Kennedy (guitar), Chris Wee (drums) Johnny Adger (bass) and Friers – are joined in the execution by Derry orchestrator Conor O’Boyle and Belfast’s Arco String Quartet. ‘I Dive Pt 1’ is a chilled cinematic opener that would be completely at home in a Blade Runner movie.

The music is meshed with the soft and somewhat melancholy narrative from American singer-songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle: “The warm air smelt of thunder again, and I was happy/ I’ve missed you.” ‘II Dive Pt 2’ strays into a more hopeful place with emphasis on beats and guitars. ‘V Hold’ is distinctively tribal, while the transition from the building cacophony of ‘VI Submerge’ into the powerful ‘VII Emerge’ is sublime. The intense title-track, meanwhile, has ASIWYFA’s signature heavy guitars and drums exploding out of the speakers.

Five years on from The Endless Shimmering, ASIWYFA have jettisoned all shackles and gone for broke. A truly exhilarating record.

8/10
Listen:‘V Hold’

Out now via Velocity Records / Equal Vision Records: