(2020) Capac - After Lights Out with Tom Harding



Review:
The seed for After Lights Out was planted when Capac member Stuart Cook happened to hear Northampton poet Tom Harding’s recording of “Night Work” on the KCRW podcast Nocturne and, captivated by the crepuscular character of the material and the musicality of the poet’s elocution, contacted him to propose the collaboration that became the ten-track album, its title taken from the aforementioned poem. A fascinating project and engrossing listen, After Lights Out is the third album from long-distance experimental outfit Capac, whose members Cook, Matthew Parker, Gary Salomon, and Kate Smith are currently split between Greece and Bristol. In its creeping, haunting tone, the album’s a natural fit for This Is It Forever, the label managed by worriedaboutsatan’s Gavin Miller. The ten pieces combine Harding’s distinctive recitations with evocative sound design by Capac. He doesn’t appear on all ten settings, however, Capac instead choosing to include instrumentals alongside ones featuring spoken word. In both cases, however, the group’s handling of modular synthesis, field recordings, tape manipulations, acoustic instrument timbres, and vocal textures creates a sound design that’s unsettling yet complementary to Harding’s texts. The Harding-less overture “Shadows of the Room” introduces the forty-three-minute recording with oppressive, dungeon-like atmospheres punctuated with the shimmer and scrape of sheet metal-like noises. The poet’s first appearance arrives with “Night Work,” his English-accented voice an arresting element alongside the lurch of a cryptic backdrop of piano, fluttering treatments, and vocal murmurings. In spoken word delivery that’s consistently nuanced, his precise enunciation enhances the material. In another’s hands, a poem titled “Radio” might be a nostalgic ode to songs from carefree teenage years; in Harding’s, it becomes a portal for shadowy creatures: “I found the last radio / Out amongst the forgotten things / … I carried it home / And kept it beside my bed / … Other nights I’d wake / To the clatter of it across the floor / And swear I’d see some shape / Light as a fox / Slip from its shell / Into the shadows of the room.” Similar in macabre tone is “Night Noises,” where Harding, fixated on the memory of a fly he killed earlier, feels “strange and sad / For the two of us adrift / And apportioned to poles / And set apart by the whole shabby / Business of existing.” Indicative of the symbiosis between sound design and text content, “Radio” sees Harding’s text repeated a number of times, each iteration increasingly degraded and static-laden. In the recording’s boldest treatment of his delivery, he’s subjected to fragmentation during “…and I,” his voice appearing as stuttering repetitions and time-stretched distortions. Alteration is less extreme for “Night Notes” though still noticeable when the voice is slowed, his regular delivery becoming stalker-like as a result.



Tracklist:
01 - Shadows of the Room
02 - Night Work
03 - The Spider
04 - Radio
05 - Train My Breath
06 - ...and I
07 - Night Notes
08 - Empty Kitchen
09 - Night Noises
10 - Quietly Conspiring


Media Report:
Genre: ambient, experimental
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