Thirst and the Cow show you how much quality ambient music can have. Sure, at first glance you think, “oh that name confuses me”. So will the music, if you try to apply logic to it. This is the kind of music only a select few can absorb themselves into. The kind of visuals you’ll experience are like no high our material world can give. This is the latest album from this artist, The Main Sequence at Last.
You’re in for a treat that changes shape, form, colour and taste. This is a multidimensional, cross-genre, universe hopping experience. After we’re catapulted into outer space with the opening single Forming, The Fusion of Heavier Elements comes next. It counterbalances gentle melody with ambient ecstasy. You’ll feel like you’re in the womb of King Crimson’s genesis. The time signatures and melody have a syncopation that keeps you excited and wanting more. Tim Gardner wants this to be an experience that transcends layers for you, him and any listener who wishes to dissolve these seeming barriers.
The bassline in Solitude transports you through time and space. It is an exciting number that slowly develops, as Thirst and the Cow plays with time and the layered crevasses that can take you through portals. Quicker tracks like Recoil will play with the systems in your head to ensure you’re in a state of euphoria. Dissonant notes will leave you in an aura of mystery. This is rock unlike whatever you’re experiencing, and it might be quite jarring the first time you reach here from standard prog rock. It is epic songs like 212° that will remind you of bands like Tool in their lighter compositions. Tim Gardener knows how the whole effect of time works in music, and treats it like another composer who is collaborating with him.
Thirst and the Cow also has vivid, imaginative elements of synth layers in A Collapsing Cloud Fragment, almost literally taking you to the depths of space through a sonic arrangement. Every composition encourages you to expand your mind to read more than is being presented to you. Magical, exponentially creative and frantically exciting is what I call this album.
Time and Adaption will definitely be one of my favourites for the kind of layers that slow cook on this eternal flame. There is a love for music that Thirst and the Cow has and shares with several other listeners of prog rock. There is a thirst now, for thirst and the cow. Listen to the explorative album here: