Moundabout: Flowers Rot Bring Me Stones – Album Review [LOUDER THAN WAR]

Moundabout: Flowers Rot, Bring Me Stones

(Rocket Recordings)

LP | DL

Released July 29th

Flowers Rot, Bring Me Stones is the enchanting debut album by the combined talents of Paddy Shine and Phil Masterson. The album is a lesson in neolithic ritual and otherworldly transcendence.

The first Moundabout release was a 2020 EP titled North Cairn, which is mostly constructed of ritualistic rhythms made on traditional instrumentals. But on this full-length album, the duo of Paddy Shine (GNOD) and Phil Masterson (Damp Howl) have taken their sound further, into a more folkloric direction. In the songs presented here, while still utilising those same traditional instruments, the pair now sing about ancient burial sites, charnel houses and stone cairns.

The vocals on this album take the overall atmosphere into a new dimension and this is what drew me in on my first listen of the single Bring Me Stones. The enchanting melody and sentiment ‘flowers rot, bring me stones’ really resonated in my mind. The album is full of great moments with lyrics that will float around your head for days on end. Both Lonely and Cold River, sounding like they were cut from the same realm as Van Morrison, are stand-out moments on an album filled with droning mysteries.



Likewise, Waste of Peace sounds like a journey deep into the heart of Brú na Bónnie, the megalithic tomb which sits beside the river Boyne. This album is about discovery as much as it is about tradition. I have never visited Brú na Bónnie or gazed into the Knowth stone carvings but I now feel a duty to do so.

Since getting the press release sent to my inbox, I have had this album playing in almost constant rotation, typically accompanying those more idyllic moments in life like a riverside walk. This album is escapism in the truest sense, it transports the mind to another world. There is something about the layered effects that accompany the traditional sounds which feel like the new world respecting the old. As both Shine and Masterson work in the world of ‘alternative’ music and have made quality music in their own right, it would be easy to equate this album as nothing more than a frivolous side-project. But is so much more than that. Flowers Rot, Bring Me Stones is another world humanity once knew and you will not want to leave it.



Moundabout can be found on Bandcamp.

~

All words by Rhys Delany. He can be found on Twitter @RhysDelany and more of his writing can be found at his author’s archive here.

[Original article published 26/07/2022 and can be found here]