‘My Noise Is Nothing’ would likely have passed me by were it not for a friend on The Social Media noting its relationship to the Future Sound of London’s ‘Lifeforms’ and the moments in the KLF’s ‘Chill Out’ when a little bit of percussion drifts over the landscape. Those references are well judged of course, but although this record is naturally touched by those stones from the past, it is also one that inhabits a sublimely impermanent position in space and time.
Lord Of The Isles appears to be the musical moniker of one Neil McDonald, whose extensive body of work (going by his Bandcamp page) seems to stretch back at least to 2010 and, on cursory further exploration, elegantly explores the realm that Warp used to call “Electronic Listening Music” (a phrase which might be to a degree problematic but is surely much better than the execrable “Intelligent Dance Music”). Certainly there is a delicious wealth of sub-genre hopping going in the catalogue, and if I prefer his more sedate and contemplative numbers to the groove-driven pulsations, then this probably says more about my age and place in life than anything else.
There is certainly something about stopping one’s world and climbing off and outwards (and/or inwards) within the sound of ‘My Noise Is Nothing’. Musically, aside from the FSOL and KLF references, it seems to share threads linking into the worlds of Basic Channel and also to Ultramarine, whose connections to mythical land and seascapes have long afforded electronica with a charming glow of warmth. Or, to be more up to date, perhaps it is the place where Bicep intersect the urban gloom of Burial’s shadows with a supple burbling of psychedelic meanders in the autumn mists. Oftentimes it is music that is barely there, as on ‘A Portrait’, where short refrains glisten like marsh gas in a seven minute plunge into sleeplessness. Or the following ‘Last Day’, which might be a wordless mystical cousin to Young Marble Giants’ ‘Final Day’ slowed down to nothingness. Frosted mullein glimpsed through sheers; drooping heads in sunflower fields at dusk.
Atop most of these sounds sit the words of Ellen Renton, a Scottish “Poet, Performer and Theatre-maker” whose work I was similarly unaware of until hearing this record. Now, I do still struggle with the spoken word at times, specifically with poets who, it feels to me, sometimes trap themselves within the rhythms expected of performance. The sing-song up and down tedium of misery and then a pause, held for breath, just so. Just when one expects it. How dull.
Ellen Renton just about escapes this black hole, and not just by weaving herself deliciously through the sounds made by McDonald. Her words are delicate cutters, delivered with a cadence that puts me in mind of Sue Tompkins, if Tompkins were a shade less abstract and fronted a band influenced more by Rome rather than by Yummy Fur. It is performative but not showy, poetry not Poetry, perhaps. If you get my drift.
Perhaps it is all at its best on the stunning ‘Don’t You Ache’. Renton is to the fore here; McDonald’s contribution a beautifully measured restraint of piano. Lyrically it is a delicious cascada of poignant imagery that scratches at wounds: “Sky hum in a sulk”; “Words gone tasteless like overdone gum”; “Every censored cut of morning” (or is it “cut of mourning”?); “The ease of war”; “That confident walk that cruelty has, like it knows it’ll never get caught”; “The devil’s advocate keeps pulling up a chair”… and… “Don’t you ache? Don’t you ache?” A cough on the corner. Feeling sorry for ourselves in our ultimate uselessness. Existential mirth of mourning. Or is it morning? Something like this. Or nothing.
It is tempting to assume that there is something in Renton’s (delivery of) language that is informed by the manner in which her own visual perception is determined by her albinism. She has written about her personal levels of visual perception and I think it’s worth quoting here:
“For some reason, vision and its parameters are ludicrously difficult to explain. Despite the frequency with which I’m asked this question (“how far can you see?”) I still struggle to give an illuminating response. I tend to reach for numbers first. I say I have 6 48 vision, so what a fully sighted person can see from forty eight metres away, I can see from six. This is a well-rehearsed phrase that rolls off the tongue. It gives brief satisfaction, and only brief, because it quickly becomes apparent that those arbitrary distances don’t comfortably translate to any real life situation. Forty eight metres is a near impossible measurement for our imaginations to accurately compute. Percentages tend to have the same effect – I cite 12.5, which is just a crude reworking of the initial figures.”
There is something intriguing in this “12.5 percent” as a rough guide to understanding what we hear Renton ‘describe’. The idea that human’s might be universally incapable of ‘seeing’ the same things. Or that we might at best ‘see’ only a fraction of the same things; experience a fragmentary part of what others experience. Despite a determination to proclaim our empathetic credentials, we are cursed (or perhaps blessed) to always Never Quite Get It. Reality is slippery.
There is something intriguing here too in the way in which voice might change, or at least warp received meaning. So when Renton says the word ‘ache’ it sounds, in her delivery, more like a sharp poke in the ribs than a soft sob of sorrow. The pokes feel sharper the deeper we get into the piece too, so that by its conclusion the phrase “don’t you ache?” is much more a poisoned dart of accusation than a gentle invitation for shared solace.
‘Don’t You Ache’ then might be a sublime highlight of ‘My Noise Is Nothing’, the loose tooth to which one cannot help but return, yet it is also true to say that its treasure is amplified by the brilliance it is surrounded by. There is nowhere on ‘My Noise Is Nothing’ where the level of engagement drifts. We are continually drawn into a space where meaning and feeling reverberate against one another, where glimpses of the tangible give way to shivers of extraordinary elegance. ‘My Noise Is Nothing’ is a record of magnificent quietude and one of the most essential releases of this, or any year.
‘My Noise is Nothing’ is available to buy/stream from various sources: https://ad93.lnk.to/MyNoiseisNothing