Label: Ethbo Music – ETHBO12LP
Format: Vinyl, LP
Country: UK
Released: 2021
Genre: Electronic
Style: Experimental, Abstract
Half-submerged, Dubby dream-pop travelogue that roams the lower reaches of the Thames.
In 1986 landscape filmmaker William Raban made Thames Film. The film follows a river journey down the Thames to the sea beginning at Tower Bridge. It’s a totally singular portrait of place, drifting in from a world just before public/private partnerships warped the landscape. The film glides past crumbling warehouses and abandoned cranes, helmed by a detached but discursive voice over from John Hurt. Out near the sea with the light failing the narrative starts to break apart caught on the sand bars and shipwrecks that haunt the riverbed.
30 odd years later the film finds its perfect partner in this beautifully rusted-out lp of lonely ambient pop. This one has been around for a few months, but always disappears before we can give it a proper review. Built on the bones of a particular strand of dreamy post-punk - think AC Marias, Tones on Tail, Operating Theatre or Graham Lewis’ He Said project - it seems to map this lonely post industrial riverscape perfectly. Watery xylophone, deep drones and the distant thud of drum machines ebb and flow beneath tranced world weary vocals. Out at the end of England, beacon lights blink in the darkness. ‘The river is a strong brown god’ As someone said.
Tracklist
1 Thanet
2 Tannery Brook
3 Siem Reap
4 Russell Grove
5 L Line
6 Kampot
7 Horniman
8 Oaxaca
