Since 2018, through a series of releases across micro-labels — including Modern Aviation, Woodford Halse, Blue Tapes and Island House Recordings — under the alias of The All Golden, Peter Gofton has seemingly been quite content to just bob around inside his own eclectic and esoteric bubble.
One that is a long way from ‘90s musical career beginnings as the drummer for Kenickie and an evolution on from other pseudonymised solo projects. This newest outing, back on the aforementioned Woodford Halse, adds to this curiously compelling latter-day pile as one of Gofton’s most crafted and fully-realised aural assortments.
Although conceptually bonded around memories of the brutalist architecture and municipal communitarianism of the Sunderland Civic Centre, demolished in 2022, Chambers stands up as a low-tech yet otherworldly edifice built from its own sonic materials. Framed primarily through the stretched parameters of a basic analogue synth set-up, with some apparent deployment of his dusted-off drum kit, this ten-track tape / download delivery has some genuinely alluring and arresting moments spread across it. This translates into fleeting retro-futuristic glimmers (“Glass” and “Exit To Street”); an utterly gorgeous sound-bath immersion essay (“The Chamber”); a percussive motorik-punk drive-through (“The Mezzanine”); liminal ethereality (“Step Into The Light”); and fizzing dystopic sound collaging (“The Wall And The Pillar”). Even though the electro-acoustic and shoegaze elements sprinkled into The All Golden’s earlier releases are notably absent this time around, the more distilled approach certainly helps to bring in some welcome extra cohesion to proceedings.Whilst still highly likely to keep The All Golden as a niche-within-a-niche enterprise, the evocative and absorbing qualities of Chambers should provide an inviting entry-point to latecomers.
-Adrian-
