By: Chad Murray
Marconi Union | website | facebook | twitter | bandcamp |
Released on August 12, 2016 via Just Music
Marconi Union are perhaps most well-known for engineering what has been scientifically verified as the most relaxing piece of music in existence; ‘Weightless’. The track was my first introduction to the band and that cloud-like serenity birthed in the song is resurrected in Ghost Stations.
Gently easing in from mechanical arms and ambient stasis, ‘Sleeper’ glides the album down to the listener with the delicacy of a falling feather, drifting in as the mind might drift into sleep. The track boasts a dream-like mystery and fluidity that takes the listener from calm to carnival with a seamlessness be-fitting sleight of hand. Rising to a precipice of glacial pads and ambient mystique, it crashes down like an aircraft out of control with erupting machines and the cacophony of colliding equipment; rhythms panicked to fever pitch. Synthesisers sobbing and a trumpet sorrowfully crooning. The sleeper is falling in a dream bound to the instrumentation. The final section combines the elements into a joyous harmony like walking on air; a jazzy conclusion to a gloomy ambient track; a welcome surprise.
Like water slowly dripping on a foggy day, ‘Remnants / Shadow Scheme’ opens with a burdened piano, whimpering each note to fruition; pads chime like hinges on some nostalgic home. The song carries with it a sense of loss; a broken promise or a by-gone era. A memory of those who once were but now aren’t anymore. The patience in the track is perhaps evocative of Stars of The Lid, but takes a much darker approach blending in a malevolent electronic element; almost replacing the Lid’s euphoria with dystopia. Acceptance is often discussed as a positive emotion for me, the second half of the track is like acceptance; you’re looking at the same bleak image but with a new perspective, one of mixed emotion perhaps leaning a little towards the positive. The swirling pads and trance-inducing drums build a sense of elation but, there’s a sense of doubt inherent in the sound. Like looking back before finally taking a step forward. The guitar line rides the track into the sunset as it draws to a close on a much more positive note.
Lost in space and isolated, synths like a siren or a beacon in the distance; the melancholy continues to permeate through the album via the piano track. Technological murmurs bowed into the distance; morose whelps gliding like clouds across silkscreen skies. A heart-wrenchingly beautiful line of flute. ‘Abandoned / In Silence’ is a two-part return to sadness by way of a cosmological expression of existential erosion. The perfect juxtaposition of otherworldly vocals and deep looming beats against the weight of the jazz influence results in something hauntingly beautiful, in a way few bands outside of Low and Her Name is Calla, rarely get to be.
‘Riser’ instantly made me feel like I had just dragged my previously unconscious carcass off the floor; the scuffle, the dizziness and drowsiness. Coming up from a shock to the system; it whirls the listener into a hypnotic void. A wasteland of light and fog; of bodies and movement. Rhythm cascading in and out, melody dancing around the ear like a cuckoo bird. A timelessness captured in optimism; a cynicism inherent in a simply acknowledged fact: all things end but our experience of them exists only in the glory of fleeting moments…and Ghost Stations is a stunningly captivating moment to experience.
The key to the album is introspection; whether riding the rails on your own with your headphones on or working in the early hours, Ghost Stations is best experienced as a vehicle for thought transporting the listener through imagination and contemplation. In this regard, it’s a delightful and enrapturing listen.
