Whether its driving, or just walking around the city, music like this always makes me feel like I'm going someplace important. Despite it's free form nature, the piece ulitimately gives the impression that it knows where it's going. This is espeically true of the breakdown, while the upright bass keeps time and the guitars hum off into the distance, drippy with reverb. The song takes a long, leisurely excursion before picking up the central melody again, and comes pretty close to traditional jazz in that regard.
So on a Monday morning, this is the kind of thing i Need -- music that will be there for the better part of 15 minutes so that I can fully absorb it on my drive into work. And as I still shake out the cobwebs this morning, I find more and more I like about this. I've been sitting on this record for a month or two now, and it's really grown on me. The opening track "Gardening, Not Architecture" is especially awesome -- faling somewhere between Tortoise and GodSpeed in it's scope and instrumentation. The whole album is excellent though.
The band will be going on a large spring tour as well, and I'm guess their show is probably pretty amazing. It's only four dudes, but together they play drums, guitar, keys, upright bass, trumpet, flugel horn and assorted "electronics." They hail from San Francisco.
You can purchase "Noumena" direct from Temporary Residence. Highly recommended.