The Lonely Bell hangs somewhere on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. For this beautiful, bewitching album, he (real name Ali Murray) first creates presence in order to portray absence, the unease of failed community. Over two, slowly burning twenty-minute pieces, the air remains heavy. However, the subtle rising of a signal on the title track belies the illusion of stasis, while a lone, faraway voice cries out repeatedly within the desolate architecture of “Then the Snow…” Gloomy and austere, Ghost Town Burning can’t help but pull the listener into its sighing void.
Maintaining a similar if more urgent mood, Tremors Today by label head Leonard Donat was released by Blackjack Illuminist Records on the very same day as Ghost Town Burning. While the former peals from the abyss, Tremors Today hurtles us into it. Here, the air is corrosive. Though low and slow, it has an admonitory stridency. It is an accomplished work of dark ambience, beautiful in fact, save for the uncomfortable fact that its plotline is our current climate disaster.
Stephen Fruitman
Avant Music News 