Windsor for the Derby
Record review
Reviewed by Darcie Stevens, Fri., Aug. 25, 2006
Windsor for the Derby
Calm Hades Float (Secretly Canadian)
Windsor for the Derby
Minnie Greutzfeldt (Secretly Canadian)
This is the heyday of Austin post-rock that everyone gushes about. This is the Trance Syndicate daydream, the sticky nights of the Blue Flamingo and the Electric Lounge, the time music was consumed by merit alone. Dan Matz, Jason McNeeley, and Greg Anderson's mid-Nineties Windsor for the Derby was worlds apart from its contemporary incarnation. Windsor's 1996 debut, Calm Hades Float, is pure ambience – echo guitar and subliminal hum winding endlessly through seven untitled cuts. Instruments ape nature, and hardly a word is heard. Repackaged and remastered with the +/- flexi, which came with the first pressing of the original vinyl, and two eerie live tracks, Hades barely gives way to Windsor's sophomore disc, Minnie Greutzfeldt. A symphony of emotive expression and beautiful pain, Minnie is WFTD's high point. Spinning in hiss and drone matched only by Slint, 1997's Minnie marked Adam Wiltzie's entry into the band. A distorted lullaby unfolds in "Stasis" just to be outdone by "Useless Arm" and 10-minute bonus track "Skimming." Repackaged with experimental, out-of-print, and sometimes-jarring EP Metropolitan Then Poland, Minnie is a lesson in minimalism. Still making bedroom music up north, Windsor was once what they now strive to be: a melodramatic outcry.
(Calm Hades Float) 
(Minnie Greutzfeldt) 
