This EP centers around the A-side’s “Let The Flies In”, which is Sontag Shogun’s single culled from their forthcoming LP, Tale. LTFI is supported by a reworked studio version of the previously released “Paper Canes” (off Absent Warrior, Abandoned Battlefield, 2012), featuring intricately designed sonic textures and cut-ups of choral voice and acoustic guitar as well as the usual SS fare of processed field recordings. “Hungarian Wheat”, by now a SS repertoire mainstay, is presented in an alternatively ambient version, drenched in reverb and what seems like a flooded corridor of static and breath samples.
Finally, the album culminates with “Gekheid Op Een Stokje” (Dutch, meaning “all jokes aside..” or literally “madness on a stick”), a fragmented collage-piece that symbolically wraps up the last year of SS’s life from Jesse’s point of view. SS spent the year in three separate countries, going through piano recordings and emailing each other tracks to flesh out the rest of the compositions on Tale bit by bit. The samples used here were recorded by Jesse and Lauren Walker (his partner in Absent Warrior) while on tour in April with Foxout!, and just as the title suggests, this track represents a sort of half-joking homage to both this displaced method of working, and the globetrotting that Sontag’s members have recently individually pursued. All in all, the LFTI EP certainly serves as an appetizer for the full-lenth record to come, but can equally stand on its own as a self-contained musical statement delivered by this emerging new-music trio.