ΔΙΣΚΟΚΡΙΤΙΚΗ

iLiKETRAiNS - ELEGIES TO LESSONS LEARNT
by George Georgiou (song292@yahoo.gr)



An honest simple answer lurks behind the weird name "iLiKETRAiNS", representing a flock of persons writing songs about historical tragedies:"a certain sense of eccentric Englishness..."answered the guys from Leeds.Their first full length album titled "Elegies to lessons learnt" follows the trails of "Progress reform" EP building a nucleus of echoing circles upon the fact that humanity fails to learn from its mistakes.Characters taken from dusty, forgotten pages from history books meet with their tough fate in huge waves of bursting guitars and percussion but also unfold their agony in patient streams of paralyzed nostalgia.The musical path as a building of sound but also as an evolution hides traces of Explosions In The Sky, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Mono, A Silver Mt. Zion, and Sigur Ros producer Ken Thomas sounds also responsible for this slice of common ground.The morose and acting baritone voice of David Martin captures the perfect dose of seriousness turning this compilation of "figures-surrounded-by-failure" tales into a constant heavy conclusion for the never ending circles of history and fate.From the great fire of London in "25 sins" to the assassinated british prime minister in "Spencer Perceval", and from the Salem witchhunt trials in "We go hunting" to the bubonic plague in Eyam village in "We all fall down", all those persons from the avant-garde of history reflect sympathy and mourn, knowledge and vainness, braveness and desperation.The coin of day and night ,the battle of life is the translation of their sound and all these dark structures of their songs ,beyond the tragedy reveal also a touching heroism...iLiKETRAiNS dare and succeed to use unusual themes and lyrical origins to offer their musical proposal in our days without ending to sound ridiculous.After millions of similar lyrical lines and boring love songs, they come up with a weird treasure of true stories for persons that really existed, carried with a cinematic soundtrack of ringing guitars, bursting percussion, shy parts of brass and cello, a slowly narrating sad voice and basically...great expectations.