Bleep

The third release on British ambient label Skire comes from its founder himself: UK composer Tom James Scott recorded Teal during a summer in which he returned to his hometown on the Northwest coast of England. With the waves washing gently ashore (’Strake’) and the seagulls screeching (‘Cornmill Crossing’), the album works as a sonic representation of this experience, and thereby delves into wider themes of fading and distorted memories. The golden light of the cover picture is paralleled in the balmy atmosphere of the album – both with the intrinsic afterthought that everything might just be an illusion. The field recordings become one with the thoughtful piano motifs and textural electronics which Scott contrived by sampling, looping and layering acoustic instruments. Carefully arranged, Teal follows a clear, powerful narrative, with the purely electronic sketches of the opener and closer embedding the summer, the dream, the memories in an analogical time frame.