The central figure in The Silver Field is Coral Rose, whose debut album for Tim Burgess’s O Genesis imprint concerns itself with the metaphorical act of leaving a home, and the metaphorical rooms of that home that begat the album’s title.

Composed of off-kilter tape loops and an anything-goes approach to sound layering – everything from strings to the queasy drones of a bagpipe chanter – Rooms is a captivating progression through an ethereal landscape lying somewhere between organic, mystical folk and an electronically-enhanced post-modern ambience thanks to heavy processing and the deployment of a breath-controlled analogue synth. The effect on tracks like ‘Gost’ is to draw you into a dense, undulating web of sonic events – clattering sounds and percussive micro-noises, a gently repeating guitar, low vocals and patches of jarring discordance.

The instrumental lamentation of ‘Rosebud’, a pairing of acoustic guitar and unpredictable, noisy interventions sounding not unlike a distorted, reverb-drenched recording of a bow being dragged across a metal bench, is nothing short of an heartbreaking, arresting moment among arresting, heartbreaking moments. It is on ‘Nourish’ when the album’s electronic dimension presents itself most clearly, with a spiralling, eddying array of echoing crystalline sequences rapidly circling a mournful, affecting vocal.

Rooms is out now on O Genesis.

Words: Mat Smith
(c) 2019 Further.