Sinners Music – 28th February 2025
Christopher Nonibor
I’m a little behind with things. Life has a habit of running away at pace. There’s no small element of truth in the observation that Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans – often attributed to John Lennon, but which first appeared in the mid-1950s, in an article in the Stockton Record of Stockton, California.
The latest release helmed by Iain J. Cole and released on his Sinners Music label is something of a departure. Although bearing the ‘various artists’ label, it is, in fact, a set of collaborations recorded with a number of different authors, whose works are narrated by other speakers. Conceived , curated, and the stories edited by David Martin, Iain J. Cole provides the musical accompaniment for the five – or seven – pieces which make up this monumental release.
Each track is a true longform work: all bar two are around – or substantially over – twenty minutes in duration.
Martin’s own contribution, ‘Relic’ evokes aspects of both The Man Who Fell to Earth and The War of the Worlds, as well as various other sci-fi tropes and no small dash of Lovecraft. Cole’s accompaniment is absolutely perfect: largely ambient, it’s composed with the most acute attention to detail, adding drama at precisely the right points, but without feeling in any way contrived or over-egged.
‘What Rupert Don’t Know’ – an exclusive short story written by Glen James Brown and narrated by Alexander King sees Cole linger in the background with a soundtrack that hangs at a respectful distance in the background, and takes the form of some minimal techno.
Gareth E Reese’s ‘We Are the Disease’, read by Daniel Wilmot, has a very different sound and feel. The vocals have a scratchy, treble-loaded reverby sound, somewhere between a radio just off-tune and Mark E Smith. It’s a bleak tale, an eco-horror delivered as a series of scientific reports, and with Cole’s ominous sonic backdrop, which has all the qualities of a BBC Radiophonic Workshop piece, the tension is compelling.
Claire Dean’s ‘The Unwish’, narrated by Helen Lewis marks a necessary shift in the middle of the album – a female voice is welcome, for a start, and so is the change in narrative voice. Women writers observe and relay differently, and the details are integral to the literary experience. Add to that a Northern intonation, and we find ourselves in another world
As a collection of speculative and environmental sci-fci, an endless sky is noteworthy for its quality. The bonus cuts – a brace of ‘soundtrack’ instrumentals showcase Cole’s capacity to create immersive slow techno works which draw heavily on dub. ‘The Rupert Zombie Soundtrack’ is a sedate, echo-heavy slow-bopping trudge, and then there’s the twenty-minute ‘The Blind Queen Soundtrack’, which is more atmospheric, more piano, less overtly techno.
Over the course of some two-and-a-bit hours, an endless sky gives us a lot to process. So much, in fact, that I’m not even sure it’s possible in a single sitting. What does it even all mean when taken together?
an endless sky is delicate, graceful, detailed. Beyond the narratives – which in themselves offer depth and detail – there is something uniquely compelling about an endless sky. Keep Watching…
AA
Aural Aggravation 