Codeine "the white birch"

People who know me know that I love dirge paced music. I love that stuff right to it's extreme conclusion: the funeral doom genre (but that's yet another story) #codiene were the band that laid my glacial paced heart bare. I read a review of "the white birch" in a fanzine and wrote the title down in one of my sketchbooks and promptly tracked it down. After listening to Big Black yesterday it lead me to ponder the other musical landmarks that led me to my current taste in music. I pulled this long loved album off the shelf and had nostalgic shivers of that grey buffalo winter of '94 when I bought this. I was in my first punk band and kept trying to sneak slower tempos  (well "mid tempos", it was a punk band afterall) into my songs. We maybe played them once, I'm sure they were awful. The spaces in the songs on "the white birch " created a palpable tension. It's almost an anxiety waiting for the next beat. The band made you listen on their terms. And this album still masters me.