God’s Plenty

Ambient duo Padang Food Tigers do not equip listeners with a map to navigate their signature fusion of found sound, lush guitar refrains and drones. Musical elements appear out of their traditional order. A Ry Cooder-like melody that could have sustained a beautiful ballad appears only at the end of ‘Slide & Tension’, and only once. ‘Dial You a Wonderhorse’ wrong foots you by abruptly withdrawing the crackling drone that had anchored the piece.

To listen to God’s Plenty is to take on the role of an aural archaeologist, piecing together sonic fragments of some mysterious civilisation. You think you understand the lapping waves on ‘O, Worshipful Company of Sleepers’, but they gradually shift to sound like paper being scrunched, and in doing so recontextualise the bell-like rattle that accompanies them. Crucially the listener is offered rich melodic material to accompany the ambient experimentation. The lap-steel lament that opens the title-track is like an exquisite landscape framed fleetingly in the window of a moving train, and God’s Plenty rewards listeners with many more moving vignettes.