Early Day Miners / Placer Found (20th Anniversary Edition)
Album: Placer Found (20th Anniversary Edition)   Collection:General
Artist:Early Day Miners   Added:Mar 2020
Label:Secretly Canadian  

Recent Airplay
1. Dec 03, 2020: Stranded at Settembrini's
East Berlin at Night
2. Apr 30, 2020: Stranded at Settembrini's
Stanwix

Album Review
DJ Away
Reviewed 2020-04-01
A slowcore classic, remixed and remastered with additional tracks. This is the first album by Early Day Miners, whose sensuous and texturally rich music explores themes of history, place, and environment. (Frontman Dan Burton is now a landscape architect, no surprise.) This, their first album, was inspired especially by photographer Richard Misrach's stark and overwhelming Desert Cantos series. The sound here is spare and subtle, evoking big empty spaces. If you like slow atmospheric music of any kind, you owe it to yourself to check this out. Also look for their crazy gorgeous second album, Let Us Garlands Bring. RIYL Talk Talk, Slint (but just the quiet parts), The War on Drugs, early Explosions in the Sky, Songs: Ohia, Low, Bluetile Lounge, Boxhead Ensemble. Start with 1, 2, 4, 5. No FCCs detected.

1. *(3:48)—Mid-tempo, gentle and upbeat. Soft, brittle drumming. Gateway song for fans of Real Estate etc. Soft drone outro.
2. *(6:05)—Slow and so, so beautiful. Hushed and noctural, with whispered, nearly spoken vocals. Very gradual build.
3. (5:17)—Medium-slow, gets closer to rock 'n' roll than anything else here, gathering speed and bordering on post-rock near the end.
4. *(8:53)—Instrumental, just guitars and keyboards. Starts very slow, picking up gradually and becoming a submerged wash. This is crying out to be used in a soundtrack.
5. *(7:32)—Slow, a little mournful and a little romantic, like early Low or Bluetile Lounge. Leans toward a heavier rock sound before pulling back.
6. (5:45)—Instrumental. Wistful, melodic mid-tempo jam, bridging the gap between Bedhead and Explosions in the Sky.
7. (13:11)—Slow, desolate. Minimal piano, lonesome harmonica, pedal-steel-type sounds, drums like Talk Talk's "New Grass." Shifts abruptly to a gorgeous build, peters out a little, gets moodier, and picks up again.
8. (5:00)—New bonus track. Instrumental. Mellow post-rock jam. Slow start, jumps a couple notches when the drums enter.
9. (5:57)—New bonus track. Instrumental, mid-tempo and pretty, with what sounds like lap steel. Early version of what would later become their song "Jefferson."

Track Listing
1. Placer Found   5. Stanwix
2. East Berlin at Night   6. Longwall
3. Texas Cinema   7. Desert Cantos
4. In These Hills   8. Prospect Refuge
  9. Blue Casino