Mortality Tables – 16th May 2025
Christopher Nosnibor
Just three weeks after the previous instalment in the extensive LIFEFILES project from Mortality Tables, now in its third season, comes what promises to be the final instalment for now. And all proceeds from this release will be paid to CALM – the Campaign Against Living Miserably. It seems fitting, given that life can often feel relentless, amped-up stress and bewilderment, and the LIFEFILES series has presented, over its duration, works which take the listener into audio representations of calmer environs. I write this as someone who has, in recent years, factored a daily walk into their routine, as much for the mental health benefits as for the physical exercise. A change of scenery, particularly in open spaces and away from crowds, can be a transformative experience.
The premise of the series, for anyone who hasn’t seen any of my previous coverage, is that the artist is given a field recording, captured by Mat Smith, who runs the label, to respond to in any way they feel appropriate. For this release, the accompanying notes record that the two tracks have been constructed using ‘Source recordings made by Mat Smith at Charing Cross Underground Station on 27 November 2021, as part of a Hidden London tour of disused areas of the station and areas not normally accessible by the public.’
In addition, there’s an excerpt from Smith’s journal, from the same date, which reads as follows: “…walked around the old station section of the Jubilee Line that isn’t used any longer, went into a construction tunnel underneath Trafalgar Square which had a bend in it to avoid the foundations of Nelson’s Column, and then finished up in a ventilation shaft above the Northern Line platform…”
Xqui’s treatment of the recording is interesting, taking the form of the ‘classic’ experimental work, the likes of which you’ll find on labels like Editions Mego, with a single longform track occupying each side. The first, ‘Charing Cross Underground’, captures the voice of what may be a tour guide, spun out in reverb and glitching echo, while trans rumble in the distance, before slowly melting into ambient abstraction. It’s like hearing the ghosts of the underground, rising up through the disused tunnels, calling out to the present to remind us of the past beneath our feet. There are flickers of chatter, as if, here in the present, we continue to talk without ever stopping to listen. Voices warp, slow, slur, distort, and it makes for an unsettling fifteen minutes.
‘Reverb Underground’ goes slower, more spacious, more echoey. I had half-expected something resembling a dub version, but instead, Xqui slows and stretches everything beyond recognition, creating a slow-motion blur, a crawling ambient drone. The sound simply hangs, dense, suffocating. Time stalls, and you find yourself floating, in suspense, in a fugue state, as the sound lifts free of context and embraces pure abstraction.
What Xqui manages to convey on this release is a sense of history, of space, of time, and the way we’re so busy rushing about in our daily lives that we never pause to contemplate the echoes of the past which exist, and linger all about us.
AA
Aural Aggravation 