After last month’s epic
electronics review pile processing nearly exhausted this
Freq scribe’s supply of listening time, cross-references and adjectives, a pre-emptive strike feels in order before things build up again. This also allows two
epics-within-themselves greater room for aural analysis. Enter then, a pair of expansive CD / digital-only outings from reliable combinations of creators and curators, from the scene that never sleeps.
Returning again as Field Lines Cartographer to Ian Boddy and Wendy Gibson Boddy’s well-organised DiN label, Mark Burford recontinues his twin fixations for stargazing and synthesis – as previously explored on albums like Superclusters, Phases Of This And Other Moons and Solar Maximum via other outlets – with the hour-long Resplendent In The Light Of The Universe.
The eight-part suite succeeds in being simultaneously vast yet intimate and uncompromising but relatively accessible. Leaning into more Berlin School-style sequencer assembly this time around arguably helps to give proceedings a noticeably more structured vibe, with less astral frazzling around the edges. Consequently, we are often made to feel at greater peace with the
celestial journeying, with fewer moments that fuel undercurrent anxieties of spinning out into an endless interstellar void.
Therefore, through minimalist drifting (“Forever Spheres”); cosmological burbling (“Elastic Erratic”); brighter strands of the
Tangerine Dream-to-
Cosmic Ground lineage (“The Cosmic Network”); rippling ambience (“Oxygen Rich Waters”); fizzing undulations (“The Light Of A Billion Stars”);
chattering pulsations (“Various Rotations”); and gloomy yet calming passages (“Gentle Flows”), Burford reconfirms and evolves his credentials as a master of looking imaginatively into and way beyond the sky at night.
Contrastingly, Subterranea — the third release dispensed by the already-promising Castles In Space off-shoot imprint Lunar Module – from Bartholomew goes for looser terra firma-rooted conceptualism, whilst being internally far more elaborately eclectic.
The collection finds the Newcastle-based
Chris Bartholomew refracting real-life challenges through multiple
sound design prisms that bring together electronics, acoustic instrumentation and momentary vocals into soundscapes and some defined songs-based material, with stirring end results. Opening with the symphonic grandeur of “Primordial”,
Subterranea reveals itself as a selection of determinedly ambitious set-pieces that sit together as well as apart from each other.
Thus, thereafter we’re transported through battles between propulsive beats and brass elements (“Terroir”); an
imagined mariachi band in neo-classical mourning (“Memorials”); glitchy percussiveness-meets-ghostly operatics (“Land Fracture”); late-period
Scott Walker prowling through digitally-distressed orchestration (“Riverbed”); choppy blends of synths and strings (“Worm Knitting”);
Steve Reich repetitions funnelled through
Warp Records filters (“Terranium”); and spectrally stretched ululations (“Rooting”).
Whilst perhaps a little too disorientating to be easily absorbed in one sitting, the eight segments of Subterranea do unpack as individually impressive explorations from a restless but deeply inventive soul.
-Adrian-
Returning again as Field Lines Cartographer to Ian Boddy and Wendy Gibson Boddy’s well-organised DiN label, Mark Burford recontinues his twin fixations for stargazing and synthesis – as previously explored on albums like Superclusters, Phases Of This And Other Moons and Solar Maximum via other outlets – with the hour-long Resplendent In The Light Of The Universe.
Contrastingly, Subterranea — the third release dispensed by the already-promising Castles In Space off-shoot imprint Lunar Module – from Bartholomew goes for looser terra firma-rooted conceptualism, whilst being internally far more elaborately eclectic.
