(2020) Slow Reels - Farewell Islands




Review:
Hints of what’s offered on Slow Reels‘ debut release is detectable in both the group name and the album title, the former hinting at the production methodology involved and the title intimating nostalgia and sonic mapping of remote terrain. It’s a new project from collaborators Ian Hawgood and James Murray, whose relationship began when they released each other’s music on their respective labels, Home Normal and Slowcraft Records. Ambient minimalist aficionados both, the two indulge their love for densely textured sound design and reel-to-reel tape machines on the release, whose four tracks naturally suggest commonalities between Slow Reels and William Basinski, Ian William Craig, Akira Rabelais, and others of like sensibility. A word about how the material evolved is in order. It began when a Warsaw-based Hawgood created a number of loops using, in his words, an “old and sadly dying Akai” and then shared them with Murray, who in turn added piano, guitar, and synthesizers at his London studio; enhancing the textural dimension further, Hawgood subsequently transferred the jointly created material back onto tape for final refinements at the mastering stage. Having been created in such manner, it’s only natural that the four long-form tracks would be marked by dust and decay and consequently suggest music from an earlier time rescued from oblivion. It’s perhaps the opening piece, “Miya,” that most exemplifies the kind of granular decay one associates with an aging reel-to-reel device; it also illustrates why the technology lends itself so perfectly to ambient soundscaping. For ten minutes, oceanic masses—think GAS minus beats—advance in the form of an engulfing cloud-like formation. A melancholy melodic progression is audible within the mass, though just barely, seeing as how smothered it is by so many layers of texture. A vaguely industrial character emerges when the slow-burning material grinds forth like a long, uninterrupted convulsion, but one could just as easily hear shoegaze in the muted howl sustaining itself throughout the piece. Stated otherwise, the material is abstract enough that it allows all manner of genre-associated labels to be projected onto it. “Lakka” perpetuates the beatless GAS character of the opening piece though this time with a more audible pulsation. Blurry tones whistle and warble faintly throughout the eight-minute display, with an equally muffled percussive accent present in the background to give the setting rhythmic heft. Gentler by comparison is “Shona,” wherein smudged tones softly warble beneath a thick coating of hiss and guitar shadings. Attentive listening reveals, however, that “Shona,” like the others, isn’t static but rather an evolving construction that undergoes transformation slowly, in this case one gradually expanding in force and dramatic weight as its thirteen minutes proceed. There’s something graceful and poetic about the settings on Farewell Islands; certainly one explanation for that has to do with the music’s nostalgic quality (overtly referenced in the closing track’s title, “Farewell”). It’s certainly easy enough to propose a parallel between washed-out Polaroids of long-past family gatherings and the soundscapes when the music, as abstract as it is, is so evocative. Still, however much on content grounds they are or are not Rorschachs, on purely sound design terms they register as wholly absorbing constructions.


Tracklist:
01 - Miya
02 - Lakka
03 - Shona
04 - Farewell


Media Report:
Genre: ambient
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits