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Tom Middleton and Mark Pritchard are made up of more than they can say, so together as a duo they make music. Working under the name Global Communication their 1994 album 76:14 (76'12") plays like a beautiful dream of pure sonic sensation. Its ten interconnected tracks, one setting up the next, run from softly sweeping gestures of cosmic cold clarity to warming meditative exercises of fragility. As lovely floods of harmony light the night with sound, zero gravity textures under phantoms of tone set off thoughts within. Scene after scene of connected vignettes are calculated to colonize the listening mind, giving rise to flights of sonic invention - as psychologically probing as they are aesthetically pleasing. Whenever ghostly notes emerge, gleam and recede in ethereal breaths or breezes, the waking world releases its hold on us just a little bit more. Decidedly interior the languid pace of 76:14 knows when to dive deep, or when to wield a light touch, as it retrains our brains to enjoy such ambitions of plot and form. Dancing in the dark, then drifting in a daze, listeners slide in and out of drums, drones, synths and zones, transformed by basslines, enlivened by beats, into the better version of ourselves we may know just before the dawn.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 31 August 2023 |
