Coju Recordings – 1st April 2024 (CD & digital)
Cruel Nature Records – 29th April 2024 (Cassette)
Christopher Nosnibor
Letters and things lost have an almost mythical status in the field of literature. So many volumes are dedicated to the reproduction of exchanges between authors of revered status, and are poured over, clawed over, by both fans and academics. Many writers of great novels were also great letter-writers, and the letters often serve to build not only biographical depth and detail but also shed light on the development of the novels, that mystical ‘creative process’. Much of history exists in letters – the rich primary source material from which we piece together the picture and assemble a coherent narrative. It may be a construct, but it’s a necessary one when it comes to understanding the world and how we collectively came to arrive at the present.
The fact no-one writes letters anymore is a great loss. The same thought and effort simply doesn’t go into emails, and they tend to be considerably shorter, too, especially in the last decade or so. In fact, the quality of communication has slumped through the floor in recent years. Emails volumes – at least, ones that aren’t transactional in some way, have plummeted in favour of WhatsApps and messenger missives via FaceBook, Twitter, etc. It’s hard to really articulate just what’s been lost over the last few years, besides simply the art of in-depth, detailed longform communications, but with anything more than five lines long likely to be dismissed as TL;DR, it’s significant. I digress… because there are rare avenues open to expand on these matters.
Benjamin Heal, one of those multi-faceted, polyartistic individuals who is hard to pin down due to the sheer range of his output, has, through the years, pursued an academic career with a focus on William S. Burroughs – a prodigious writer of letters – and performed experimental noisy indie under the guise of Cowman, sharing stages with the likes of Trumans Water and Gum Takes Tooth, as well as his more electro-centric vehicle Coaxial.
Now resident in Taiwan, his latest project seems to bring together these elements of a diverse life. The material on this, the debut release from The Lost Letters – which finds Heal working with Fulia, is a calm and calming collection of delicate songs. The duo offer a quite gentle and melodic set of tunes in which is mostly centres around mellow acoustic-led indie, and slow, sparsely-arranged, soporific shoegaze and it’s not merely projection on my part in detecting a wistful, vaguely nostalgic air permeating the songs. The songs effortlessly drift and weave, Fulya’s vocals adding a layer of sound rather than easily audible lyrics.
The seven-minute ‘Cecille’ has, by its trilling gentility, nothing to do with The Walking Dead: it’s a graceful exploratory work which is mellow, melodic, and carries heavy hints of The Cure circa Disintegration thanks in no small part to its fulsome, airy bass sound and crystalline guitars, and it’s fair to reference Cocteau Twins at this juncture, too.
Things take a turn for the darker and more discordant on the lugubrious, plodding ‘Cut’, which scrapes and scratches for another seven minutes. With its muttered, monotone vocals and insistent sparsity, it offers hints of Shellac and latter day Band of Susans, in contrast to the soft acoustic instrumental work of ‘Route Rute’. These songs are on the longer side by necessity: repetition has greater impact over duration, and if the literary allusions and lifts by means of the deployment of the cut-up technique devised by Burroughs and Gysin are largely lost in the mix, the overall effect of discomfort and disjointedness remains strong throughout the set. ‘Crystal Skies’ is murky, with a drifting ambience spun through with a softly picked guitar, before ‘Sails and Sou’wester’ brings the album full circle to its nautically-themed beginning. While inviting comparisons to Slowdive and Cranes, it cascades dreamily into a mesmerising sea of sound, so richly evocative that you ache as it drifts on toward the horizon, leaving you reaching for something intangible.
Critics often write of craft, but the most moving music often comes from intuition and feeling, and this is moving in the subtlest of ways. Quite simply, The Lost Letters is a beautiful album.
AA
Aural Aggravation 