The Mile End Ladies String Auxiliary - 'From Cells of Roughest Air' EP

Godspeed and Set Fire To Flames performing their apocalyptic compositions after walking home along cosmopolitan rue St-Laurent

Album Review by Sean Michaels | 17 Mar 2006
Album title: 'From Cells of Roughest Air' EP
Artist: The Mile End Ladies String Auxiliary
Label: Bangor/ Southern
The flats in Montreal's Mile End aren't dank basement holes, windows piled high with snow. They're not bare lightbulb-lit rooms with cracks in the walls. They're homes with flowers in the window-sills, children playing outside, couples sitting drinking tea on the fire escapes. Trios of young women strolling by, bearing violin, viola and cello. So in some ways it's strange that the city's post-rock community emerged out of this quarter, Godspeed and Set Fire To Flames performing their apocalyptic compositions after walking home along cosmopolitan rue St-Laurent. But in another way it's right; right that a Montreal string trio, comfortable in a beautiful city, can take the time to dig deep and play potent things. Four instrumental pieces that graze the shadowy bits of your mind, that revive you with the sound of strings on strings, that feel simultaneously like rising, roaring and receding storms. [Sean Michaels]
From Cells of Roughest Air' is out now.