Virginia Wing, Guests
"Ecstatic Arrow is an album of fresh starts. Richards and Pillay recorded in the Swiss Alps, and while the connection between location and sound is often spurious, there is a heady clarity to the album that you might describe as 'alpine' if that word hadn’t been ruined by men’s shower gel. Koto sparkles; swathes of synthesizer mist descend, then break, allowing incandescent pop choruses to break through; and the pair create ashram lusciousness from icy machines. Virginia Wing’s is an understated but familiar scramble of mid-’80s pop at its most avant-garde—Laurie Anderson’s sprechgesang, Peter Gabriel and Japan’s chilly hauteur; Kate Bush’s imposing dynamic and Malcolm McLaren’s impish reinvention—so if Ecstatic Arrow doesn’t feel quite like stepping into a new world, it at least returns us to an unspoiled glade." (Promo Copy)