Ensemble Economique

Brian Pyle is becoming a big name in disquieting ambient and haunted audio, and two new releases (this and Light that Comes, Light that Goes) from him this week aptly explain why. Interval Signals is an enticingly evocative story, a single-take journey through a series of interiors and exteriors spaces layered with memories and geographies. Melancholy like an old crime scene, its mixture of ancient broadcasts, echoes trapped in the dusty twentieth-century telephone network, spiritualistic tuned percussion and stumbling Romantic piano with strongly emplacing sounds and field recordings both suggestive and bewildering. This will interest those who know what Leyland Kirby, The Focus Group and Infinity Frequencies know, but it also hints at artists like Mike Nelson and filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami, and really creates a setting that ventures beyond the usual metaphors of mournful archaism. Gently profound and highly recommended.