James Murray’s contributions to the quiet details series now number three, building on the Slowreels – Everyday Exotic collaboration with Ian Hawgood and Weeds, his debut solo album.
About the sequel, James has said, “Islands Alight making landfall amidst these relentless heatwaves and impending drought feels about right; environmental anxiety courses through the album like wildfire, consciously balanced only by the rising of pale, elemental waters.
Developed over four years, the origins go back further still. Drawing together wide- screen melodic, rhythmic and electroacoustic concerns, Islands Alight stands as a deliberate, defining work at the confluence of ambient dub roots and the artist I am now.”
What’s the music like?
Murray has a special way of working with deep musical ambience that combines both restfulness and emotion. Islands Alight is undoubtedly suitable for hot weather listening but has a cool edge to it, calming the fevered brow.
After Shallows sets the scene, its deep sounds in contrast to its title, before Becalmed builds with steady intensity, with stately and rather gorgeous shifting patterns. Whale Isles pans out again for an expansive view, and has real presence, glinting at the edges but underpinned by solid bass. Albatross soars but also applies a firm beat, before Murray goes for deeper bass with Sargasso, the dub elements coming through. In fact the percussion is deceptive, providing strong rhythmic profiles but somehow sitting in the background.
Does it all work?
It does. Murray paces things to perfection, and the overall ambience is lasting long after the album has finished.
Is it recommended?
Enthusiastically. The best ambient music manages to soothe but also inspire, and James Murray is capable of providing both in equal measure. An album to put on repeat, for sure.
Signum Classics SIGCD1007 [67’32”] Producer Andrew Keener Engineer Oscar Torres, Matthew Swan
Recorded 9-11 June 2025 at City Halls, Glasgow
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Signum Classics makes a notable addition to the discography of John McCabe (1939-2015) with his Second and Third Symphonies, alongside his Cello Concerto, given committed and perceptive performances from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with Kenneth Woods.
What’s the music like?
Ranging over four decades, McCabe’s seven symphonies are a defining factor of his output and his achievement overall. An ability to reassess the genre afresh each time is hardly less true of those 20 or so concertos which, between them, encompass the entirety of his career.
Certain listeners may have encountered the Second Symphony via Louis Frémaux’s recording (EMI/Warner) made soon after the premiere. The catalyst was Sam Peckinpah’s Western The Wild Bunch (1969) and though McCabe does not follow this hard-hitting scenario literally, he does chart its emotional and maybe its experiential trajectory. A speculative woodwind phrase pervades the single movement whose five sections purposefully alternate fast and slow tempi, incisive and reflective moods, on its course to a visceral while cathartic denouement. That the work emerges full circle, the same yet different, comes as no surprise given its inspiration in a film which was unyielding in its fatalism but highly enlightening through its innate realism.
The stylistic consistency of McCabe’s idiom across several decades is borne out by his Cello Concerto, the ‘Songline’ of whose subtitle references that route taken through its content by the listener akin to aboriginals tracing a physical path through the Australian terrain; even a psychological path through their culture. Tersely though cogently argued, its outer Allegros frame a lengthy Adagio that takes in elements of slow movement and scherzo – separated by an accompanied cadenza where the soloist interacts with luminous tuned percussion in what ranks among its composer’s most eloquent inspirations. Neither are those closing bars, their abruptness dispelling any equivocation, seem other than inevitable in terms of a conclusion.
Stemming from what was a productive period for the genre in the UK, the Third Symphony is a highlight of McCabe’s output. The ‘Hommages’ of its subtitle makes reference to Haydn and Nielsen – but any such allusions are merged into a cumulative structure whose three (more or less) continuous movements unfold from an oblique if stealthy sonata design, via a ‘Fantasia’ more intermezzo than slow movement, to a ‘Fugue-Variations’ which gradually propels the whole orchestra towards an inexorable culmination with resplendent brass then ricocheting percussion. One of the most visceral endings in the modern symphonic repertoire that made an audible impression at its premiere, 48 years ago, and would doubtless do so again today.
Does it all work?
Yes, not least with Woods so attuned to McCabe’s idiom: the Second Symphony less taut if more flexible than Frémaux’s pioneering account and the Third a reminder of why Charles Dutoit’s premiere left such an impact. Nor is Raphael Wallfisch at all wanting in Songlines.
Is it recommended?
Indeed, enhanced by spacious yet detailed sound with informative notes from Guy Rickards. Hopefully Woods and the BBCSSO will take McCabe’s final two symphonies into the studio, while such major works as the Third Piano and Second Violin Concertos also await recording.
The second collaborative album between Animal Collective’s Panda Bear and founding member of Spacemen 3, Sonic Boom, looks to build on their successful work together on the Reset album of 2022.
A ? OF WHEN takes a different approach, using as its source material harp loops from Mary Lattimore, together with steel drum sequences, pedal steel webs and fragments of a mariachi band.
While the music might sound detached, it is actually a sharply observed commentary on the state of the world. As the album progresses they look at online exhaustion and progressive depression, political upheaval and the environment.
As the text on the press release states, “The goal is for the music to create physical connections between people, to encourage them to enjoy a real experience in the world with it and each other.”
What’s the music like?
In relation to the objective of the album, it is very much job done – for a listen to this album gives the listener a lasting positivity.
There may be some lyrical dark spots on the surface but musically this is bright sunshine, a celebration of two musical minds meeting and sparking some genuinely uplifting music.
The obvious reference points are The Beach Boys, with a frisson of The Mamas and the Papas and also The Zombies, but all updated with electronic knowhow and hazy production warmth. The source material – Lattimore’s harp and the accompanying steel band brightness – is economically used, and proves the perfect complement for Panda Bear’s vocals.
These are as distinctive as ever, and burrow into your brain via the incredibly catchy Lucky Charm or the light / dark alternations of Graveyard, up in tempo but down in lyrics.
The chorus of Never Givin’ In is a lasting show of strength, while the upbeat title track follows suit. Pray to you is immersed in watery strings, while Somethin’ that lasts shows this music has staying power, finding grace and tender moments among the woozy reverb.
Does it all work?
It does. The two work easily in each other’s company, and the resultant sound is like a musical heatwave.
Is it recommended?
Heartily. Music can be so much fun in collaboration, and A ? OF WHEN celebrates the outcome. Pure musical enjoyment was rarely so immediate!
For fans of… Animal Collective, The Beach Boys, Peaking Lights, Supertramp
I have always admired the ability of Anthony Gonzalez to paint expansive musical pictures in his work as main writer for M83. However he is an extremely effective ambient writer too, as he showed on the largely instrumental release Digital Shades Vol. 1 in 2007, writing almost completely without beats. Coloring The Void is a completely unhurried example from the album’s core, scaling the peaks of euphoria as it progresses:
The work of Andrew Weatherall is greatly missed, not least because he managed to include so many different forms and genres in his writing. We don’t always associate him with ambient music, but Sabres of Paradise, the group he was part of with Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, wrote an absolute beauty with this heat-soaked track:
Arcana.fm 