“Ghosts talk(ing) to us all the time – but we think their voices are our own thoughts.”
The above is a quote attributed to David Foster Wallace (as a scribbled note at the bottom of a manuscript of ‘Good Old Neon’, a story featured in Oblivion: Stories). It’s a comforting thought, in a way. That ghosts aren’t these creepy figures that wander around at night, rattling chains and tapping on the window pane, they’re just what we have left of the people we used to know. I found myself thinking about it after a few consecutive spins of Fireworks and the Dead City Radio, the new album from Sketches For Albinos. The album uses voice recordings to provide the sole vocal accompaniment to the music. Some of the recordings are clear, others almost unintelligible. We hear men, women and children. I have no idea who these voices belong to, and I don’t think it matters.
Sketches For Albinos is the recording project of composer and “sound artist” Matthew Collings. Fireworks and the Dead City Radio is the project’s first album since 2010’s Days Of Being Wild and Kind, although Collings does also release music under his own name, as well as comprising one half of Graveyard Tapes with Euan McMeeken of The Kays Lavalle. The album has been brewing for six years, and symbolizes a period of great development and upheaval in the life of its creator, “a time where the possibilities of life unfolded in a profound and life changing manner… where euphoric joy and great sadness collided.” The album is being released on the ever-brilliant Mini50 Records, home to WTD faves Old Earth, and fans of any of their previous releases would be well advised to check it out.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/131533580″]
Collings experiments with electronics to create something truly unique. The strange mix of ambient, drone and noise creates a surreal, dream-like atmosphere, an atmosphere only heightened by the juxtaposition between tracks. A good example is the transition between track five, ‘the sailor in the city is buying up time’ and track six, ‘she drew a pentagon’; the former sedate and peaceful with this almost underwater-sounding piano, the latter buzzing with reverb or feedback and is more garage rock than drone. The other notable aspect of the album is the aforementioned voice recordings. They add something that traditional vocals could not and, for me, really make the album what it is. I wish this album had been around when we were trying to get our Voicebox mixtape together many moons ago, it would have been perfect.
The album is deep and challenging, but not oppressively so. Collings leaves room for the listener to breathe and to think and, perhaps most importantly, to feel. It’s an emotionally charged record, despite not having conventional lyrics, perhaps even for that very reason. It feels like Collings put something tangible into making this, as if each track is a little slice of his mind, of his thoughts and wishes and memories. Of the ghosts of his past, the voices inside his head. Perhaps that’s what those voices are after all.
Sketches For Albinos’ Fireworks and the Dead City Radio is out on the 24th of March on Mini50 Records.
EDIT: You can now purchase the album here.