Chasing After Shadows… Living with the Ghosts
Artist: Hammock 
Label: Hammock Music
Time: 12 tracks / 72 mins
 
Those who think that music is all about message can look away now; this disc only has one couplet in its 72 minutes, so it’s a bit sparse on the food-for-thought front. 

However, anyone who relishes glittering, ambient post-rock can take a closer look. Marc Byrd, who helped to make The Choir’s last album or two such atmospheric treats, is half of Hammock – two guitarists with enough spare time in the studio to start playing with moods as well as the ‘record’ button.

Along with Andrew Thompson (and friends popular with Tollbooth: Matt Slocum, Christine Glass, Ken Lewis, Derri Daugherty and Steve Hindalong) he has crafted a shimmering, reverberating rainfall of sound that will conjure very different images for different hearers. While the effect is nothing like as dark as the cover suggests, it does have that floating quality. Fortunately, several tracks are almost seamless at the join, so it works well as a single, warm and cosy duvet of sound. Alternatively, imagine lying back in a boat that is drifting in an underground cavern, up-lit by a rainbow wash of lighting effects. That might come close.

It’s not about individual tracks (this needs more space and time than an i-Pod shuffle will allow) but it doesn’t get much better than “The World We Knew as Children,” which had me wondering whether the title has any link to the musicians’ one-time band Common Children. There is a sudden dash of Meddle -era Gilmour tone in “You Lost the Starlight in your Eyes” and “Breathturn” shows how well the extra textures have been blended in, as the horns have a muffled mistiness that adds character to the track without imposing itself. “Andalusia,” whose minimalistic first two minutes have plenty of Brian Eno’s Music For Airports about them, before gaining an orchestral thread and a languid beat, is a microcosm of the whole collection.

While the project is a wash of morphing shades, dig deeper and there is plenty of detail to study in these hazy starlight soundscapes, should you feel inclined. 

Those who need a lot of stimulation might find the dreaminess a little too static, but I have found this disc easy to leave on repeat while I work with words, it’s chiming soundscape like a warm radiator to my chilled ears. I don’t know how I could have missed this band’s previous three full-length LPs, but the next one won’t pass me by. This is lovely stuff. 

(Visitors to www.hammockmusic.com/site/ can sample the sound and get a free single by signing up to newsletters.)

Derek Walker