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Quade: The Foel Tower review – twisted Bristol band tap into the tensions between industry and nature

Drawing on folk, jazz, ambient, post-rock and doom, the quartet’s new album shrouds cryptic, literate lyrics behind rumbling bass blasts and writhing strings

On this second album, experimental Bristol four-piece Quade make a virtue of the slow build; Barney Matthews’ bassy, cryptic vocals are buried beneath shivering cymbals, gut-rumbling bass and blasts of static, with most of the lyricism left to multi-instrumentalist Tom Connolly’s twisting, agonised, beatific violin. Drawing from folk, jazz, ambient and doom, and inspired by tensions between industry and nature, the album was made in Wales’ Elan Valley (mid-album instrumental highlight Nannerth Ganol judders like a low-flying helicopter) and titled after a building on the Garreg Ddu reservoir, which sends its water on a long journey to Birmingham. There are literary references (Le Guin, Yeats, Thomas) buried in the murk, and mystifying media samples (possibly from meditation app Headspace, and an unnamed actor) to pick apart – but The Foel Tower is no concept album.

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