This third album from Ghostwriter, the shapeshifting collaborative project of Mark Brend (formerly of Fariña, The Palace Of Light and Mabel Joy), has been a long time coming. With work in progress preview segments having appeared online over the last few years, whilst a suitably supportive label home was sought, Tremulant has manifestly been a labour and a love to deliver to a niche section of the world at large.
Featuring Brend in command of nearly all the instrumental duties and with integral vocals from Suzy Mangion (a solo artist also known for her time with George, The Winter Journey, Arbol and Piano Magic), Michael Weston King (The Good Sons, My Darling Clementine and also a sole trader) and Andrew Rumsey (a folk songsmith affiliated to Gare Du Nord Records and an Anglican bishop by occupation), the remotely-assembled five-track Tremulant tips a lot of intriguing ingredients into an expansive yet intimate melting pot.
At its central core is a communalist exploration of vintage hymns and spiritual songs of English, Welsh, Scottish and American ancestries from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which Mangion, King and Rumsey vocally revive in both virtual ensemble and more solitary configurations. Around them, Brend weaves his increasingly refined neo-antiquarian arrangements from piano, harmonium, acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, bass, percussion, synths and found sounds. Consequently, the record doesn’t fit easily into any pigeonhole. Whilst this may have been a curse in finding a corporeal release route, it’s ultimately a blessing in terms of the distinctive end product. The introductory cut is an interpretation of the hand-me-down traditional “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down”, previously known to this listener via Uncle Tupelo’s sterling earthy take. Here, the three singers, with King at the fulcrum, pick a funereal pace for their stark yet rousing rendition, underpinned by Brend’s subtly amorphous accompaniment, that’s curiously part-Anglo-pastoral and part-The Firstborn Is Dead-era Bad Seeds.After such a relatively straight-ahead scene-setter, the record travels into even more abstract and ruminative realms. Thus, the ensuing “I Stand Amazed” – redrawn from Charles Gabriel’s turn of the twentieth century composition “I Stand Amazed In The Presence” – begins as a somewhat austere affair led by Rumsey, before passages fleshed-out by Mangion’s reliably beatific tones and Brend’s flickering woozy chamber-folk layers bring in more serene, comforting and otherworldly elements.
With the piano samples-based sound collage but still hymn-derived instrumental “Here” and the bucolic lullaby-like Mangion-driven version of the 1868-vintage “Often Forfeit” acting as less imposing interludes, the hybridising gates are flung wide open for the closing sixteen minutes of “The Anchor”. Descended from an 1882 piece, this lengthy finale drifts through various movements, made up of spoken-word tracts, a haunting centrepiece performance from Mangion and group-based ululations married to a spread of gently uplifting, elegiacally twinkling and darkly droning undercurrents from Brend’s ancient-modern sonic workshop.Taken all together, Tremulant commands a remarkably bewitching presence through its complex combinations of historical and very much alive components that transfixes and inspires in generous measures, regardless of the need to connect fully with the ecclesiastical content. A beguiling masterstroke, in short.
-Adrian-
