If you’re adamant that Lakes isn’t really your thing, here’s a challenge: play Solar Flecks really loud in your lounge room and move two or three rooms away, making sure to close all the doors behind you. Listen to what wafts down the hall or through the walls and you’ll notice that the hostile textures have dissipated, leaving behind songs that are sometimes oblique (‘Misting’), and sometimes almost inane in their catchiness (‘Dragon Current’). Repeat this a few times, and then play it again on headphones. Really loud. If you don’t love it now, with the hooks already embedded in your mind, you never will.

There are only a few factors separating this music from folk. The eastern scales are back, bringing all the improvised (but invariably resolving) melodic arcs back into focus, confusing the foundations of songs that are often only traceable by a lone, droning tom drum. Sean Bailey’s vocals are locked in a mode of despair; he clutches to vowels in a faintly harassing manner, with force and urgency negating any affectation. And those drums, which pulse within each of these songs, are taut and unrelenting; stubbornly keeping the beat and adorned only occasionally with shakers. When you can get a grasp on the lyrics they’re impressionistic: words offer themselves as clues, illustrative and helpful milestones that elucidate the esoteric world Bailey can conjure through music alone anyway.

In light of Bailey’s other project Wasted Truth – a comparatively straightforward punk affair – Lakes begins to sound like a mode of song that could fit almost any outfit, but is instead delivered in this minimalist/maximalist fashion: minimal fuss, maximum sound. Opener ‘Energy Garden’ hints at a departure from his previous LP Cloven. The tom drum is processed to the point where it might be programmed (is it?), and sparks of crude noise feed a shroud of calm organ drone, bringing to mind a kind of inverted Fantasia, all choreographed smoke plumes and metronomicly precise conveyor belts. It’s mechanically exact and subject to wear. In worst case scenarios it could ignite a factory fire.

But from then on it’s Bailey, his guitar, and some drums in full attack mode. Rarely is there room to breathe or take stock. Lakes’ music feels like some heaving mass of placenta that you need to tear apart and get within – an initially horrendous but eventually normalising womb of sound. Once you’ve managed to get in – to penetrate the untoward elements – songs such as ‘Solar Flecks’ and ‘Dragon Current’ are easily cherishable. Though I don’t count on many having the patience to get that far. Do give it a go, though, because even when it lags, Solar Flecks is as transportive as ever.

by Shaun Prescott